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SESQUICENTENNIAL YEAR 1812-1962
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PRINCETON
SEMINARY
BULLETIN
Paradoxes of the Ministry Today All Things to All Men Kerygma and Discipleship Sermons:
The Light of Men Prophet and Priest, But Not a
Freedom and Tradition in Pastoral
Renewal Through Witness
Tillich’s Science of Being
King
Theology
Franklin C. Fry Jas. I. McCord Otto A. Piper
H. Ganse Little Eugene C. Blake
Seward Hiltner
George W. Webber
Wm. Hallock Johnson
VOLUME LVI, NUMBER 1 OCTOBER 1962
PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
Jas. I. .McCord President
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Peter K. Emmons, President John M. Templeton, Vice-President
Frederick E. Christian, Secretary George W. Loos, Jr., Treasurer
Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, New York, N.Y., Assistant Treasurer
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Arthur M. Adams |
J. Keith Louden |
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Roland W. Anderson |
Thomas M. MacMillan |
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Clem E. Bininger |
Joseph E. McCabe |
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Eugene Carson Blake |
John W. Meister |
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John G. Buchanan |
W. Beverly Murphy |
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Ernest T. Campbell |
Mrs. John J. Newberry |
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Allan M. Frew |
Elmer L. Reynolds |
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John T. Galloway |
William H. Scheide |
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E. Harris Harbison |
H. D. Moore Sherrerd |
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Ralph Cooper Hutchison |
Laird H. Simons, Jr. |
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Weir C. Ketler |
W. Sherman Skinner |
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Bryant M. Kirkland |
George E. Sweazey |
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Harry G. Kuch |
Mrs. Paul Switz |
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Raymond I. Lindquist |
Samuel G. Warr |
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John S. Linen Edmund P. Lorenz |
TRUSTEES EMERITI |
David B. Watermulder |
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Richard J. Dearborn |
Wm. Hallock Johnson |
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Benjamin F. Farber |
Albert J. McCartney |
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Henry Hird |
Mrs. Charles 0. Miller |
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN |
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Donald Macleod, Editor |
Edward J. Jurji, Book Review Editor |
The Bulletin is published quarterly by the Trustees of the Theological Seminary of the United Presbyterian Church at Princeton, New Jersey. Numbers I, 2, and 3 of each volume are mailed free of charge to all alumni and on an exchange basis with various institutions. Number 4 in the series is the annual academic catalogue of the Seminary and may be obtained by request to the Office of the Registrar.
Second class postage paid at Princeton, N.J.
The Princeton Seminary Bulletin
| VOL. LVI OCTOBER, 1962 Number 1
I Donald Macleod, Editor Edward J. Jurji, Book Review Editor
Paradoxes of the Ministry Today Franklin Clark Fry 4
All Things to All Men Jas. I. McCord 12
Kerygma and Discipleship Otto A. Piper
Sermons :
The Light of Men H. Ganse Little
Prophet and Priest, But Not a King Eugene C. Blake
Freedom and Tradition in Pastoral Theology Seward Hiltner
Renewal through Witness George W . Webber
Tillich’s Science of Being W . Hallock Johnson
Book Reviews :
Theology
The Church’s Confession under Hitler, by A. C. Cochrane Jas. /. McCord
The Second Vatican Council, by Henri Daniel-Rops The Council, Reform and Reunion, by Hans Kung
Communism and the Christian Faith, by L. de Koster Charles C. West
Biblical
The Thanksgiving Hymns, by Menahem Mansoor Charles T. Fritscli
The Royal Psalms, by Keith R. Crim
The Scrolls and Christian Origins, by Matthew Black
When Israel Came Out of Egypt, by Gabriel Hebert Philip C. Hammond
The Patriarchal Age, by G. F. Pfeiffer
The Phoenicians, by Donald Harden William R. Lane
The Birth of the Christian Religion and The Origin of the
New Testament, by A. F. Loisy Otto A. Piper
Lists of Words Occurring Frequently in the Coptic New Testament,
by B. M. Metzger Wm. F. Albright
Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, by G. E. Mylonas Bruce M. Metzger Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, Vol. 8 (Romans and
Thessalonians), by R. Mackenzie Georges A. Barrois
Concordance to the Distinctive Greek Text of Codex Bezae,
by J. D. Yoder jan A_ Moir
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THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
History
On the Road to Christian Unity, by Samuel McC. Cavert The Ecumenical Movement, by Norman Goodall One Great Ground of Hope, by Henry P. Van Dusen Freedom and Catholic Power in Spain and Portugal, by Paul Blanshard
The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 1919-1941, by Donald B. Meyer
The Christians of Korea, by Samuel H. Moffett
Norman V. Hope 72 72
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James H. Smylie 74 /. Christy Wilson 76
Practical Theology
The Search for Meaning, by A. J. Ungersma Doctor Sangster, by Paul Sangster From Out of the West, ed. by Paul Jesse Baird The Christian Answer, by George E. Sweazey Proclaiming Christ Today, by W. Norman Pittenger
E. G. Homrighausen 76 Donald Macleod 77
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General
Through the Valley of the Kwai, by Ernest Gordon John Killingcr 80
Hear the Word : A Novel about Elijah and Elisha, by H. Zador 81
IN THIS ISSUE
The Sesquicentennial Program of Princeton Theological Seminary began with a Service of Worship in the First Presbyterian Church on April 23, 1962, with Dr. H. Ganse Little, Minister of the Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, California, as preacher. Dr. Little, an alumnus of the Seminary, delivered the sermon, “The Light of Men,” which is published in this number of The Bulletin.
The 150th Commencement brought distinguished churchmen to the cam- pus: Dr. Eugene C. Blake, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church and an alumnus of the Seminary, gave the Bac- calaureate Sermon, “Prophet and Priest, But Not a King.” The commence- ment address, “Paradoxes of the Ministry Today” was delivered by Dr. Franklin C. Fry, President, The United Lutheran Church in America and Chairman of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches. A farewell message to the Graduating Class, “All Things to All Men,” was given by Dr. Jas. I. McCord, the President of the Seminary.
Two papers by distinguished members of the Seminary Faculty are in- cluded : “Kerygma and Discipleship,” by Dr. Otto A. Piper, who retired this year after twenty-five years as Helen P. Manson Professor of New Testa- ment Literature and Exegesis. “Freedom and Tradition in Pastoral Theol- ogy” is by Dr. Seward Hiltner, Professor of Theology and Personality. Al- though this article was written some years ago and its thesis given fuller treatment in his Preface to Pastoral Theology (Abingdon, 1958), Dr. Hilt- ner has seen no reason to alter the basic point of view advocated and explored.
During the Institute of Theology in July, 1962, the general theme was “The Holy Spirit in the Renewal of the Church.” An address, “Renewal through Witness,” delivered by Reverend George W. Webber, Minister of the East Harlem Protestant Parish, New York, as part of a series, is pub- lished in response to many requests.
Of unusual interest to Princeton alumni will be the article, “Tillich’s Sci- ence of Being,” by William Hallock Johnson. Dr. Johnson is one of the oldest living alumni of the Seminary, Class of 1896. After a distinguished career as scholar and teacher, he served as President of Lincoln University until his retirement in 1936. Although he is now in his ninety-seventh year, he main- tains a lively interest in theological and philosophical studies and from within the context of a former generation he evaluates the fresh concepts of the new.
D.M.
PARADOXES OF THE MINISTRY TODAY
Franklin Clark Fry
As a far more distinguished voice . than mine has already reminded this Sesquicentennial celebration, in the kind of world in which we live, the para- dox is becoming an increasingly apt fig- ure of speech and more and more fits real- ity around us, to which, after all, a living language is designed to correspond. Right in every-day affairs, who of us is not acquainted with the way, in fact the inevitability with which we find our- selves reduced to contradictions every time we set out to speak of the pro- founder things of character ; of love and hate, of commitment and self-centered- ness, even of generosity and thrift? No sooner do we turn the first corner than we find our feet snared in riddles and our tongues beginning to speak in para- doxes.
“Absence makes the heart grow fond- er,” is emphatically, often painfully true, as a chronic itinerant like me who is doomed to wander the face of the earth almost as much as a certain character mentioned in the first chapter of Job — although, I hope, to a better purpose — can testify. Yet, simultaneously, who can deny that the opposite adage is no less so? In the absorption of any mo- ment, in concentration on the task at hand ; as for example right where we are now : “out of sight” does mean “out of mind.”
“A penny saved” — no doubt about it — is still “a penny earned” but in the next flash it too is cancelled out by an equally sensible warning how perilously
easy it is to be “penny wise and pound foolish.” And so it goes on.
It is hardly surprising that when we move over into the realm of sacred things, the incidence instantly becomes much, much higher. That is predictable when life is looked at in depth and at the same time in its totality; life which by its very nature defies being captured in a simple statement or comprehended in what after all can only be a single re- flection from one of the facets of what God himself has made a sparkling prism with many sides. It is dramatic how the New Testament bristles, or if you pre- fer, glistens with paradoxes.
“He who is not with me is against me,” the Master flatly declared, but lis- ten to his very same voice in the morn- ing when the disciples reported to him that a man casting out devils in his name would not follow them : “Forbid him not . . . for he that is not against us is on our side.” Both on the same su- preme authority are so completely con- tradictory but incontestably true. “Bear ye one another’s burdens” precedes by only three verses, “Every man shall bear his own burden.” We are to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, and precisely at the instant when a man does not have even a tiny corner of his heart left with which to do it, he is to love his neighbor as himself. The Kingdom of God itself, we are told, is simultaneously within us, in the intimate, private realm of personal piety ; and among us, in the complicated and compromising world of our relations with other people ; without
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
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even a shade of difference in the Greek preposition to give us a hint of the tran- sition.
The Christian man, looking inward, is justified by faith and yet at the very mo- ment of his ecstasy at realizing it, with a chill he finds himself still in the bonds - of sin and in need of constant repentance.
It is no wonder that II Corinthians 6 is such a classic : sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; chastened and not killed; dy- ing and behold we live ! It could be mul- tiplied many times. It has in it the juice and the essence of truth.
In this spirit and against all this mon- tage of memory, I am venturing to speak to you at these Commencement exercises on “Paradoxes of the Ministry Today.” I do so because I believe that the subject itself is worthy of being dignified by be- ing cast in this form and because aside from everything else, I hope the very shape of this address, with the hooks at- tached to it, may snag the fabric of your minds and attract you to listen to what I have to say. Four such paradoxes in all will define the bony structure of all that follows.
I
The first, inevitably, is : we live in an age in which the Gospel that we preach must be relevant but, woe be to us and to our children, if it is not also timeless. “Relevant,” without doubt, is the catch- word of our day ; more deeply than that, we have recognized in it no less than a divine imperative — and so we should. As every observer and above all every participant must realize, it has become the touchstone of church life everywhere in 1962. There is no question, to begin with, of that being true of the pyramid- ing councils of churches that we have
organized in our time and that are so expressive of the mood of our genera- tion. It is not too much to say that it has become so much a predilection in them that it has almost turned into a fixation.
The world is hungry, although it has to be admitted, very possibly it is no more so than it has always been ; and we unlike our fathers, feel an overwhelming new compulsion, we have a sharpened conscience to feed it. As an organic re- sult, what may be the most distinctive and revealing new dimension of twenti- eth century Christianity — as distinctive and revealing in its way as the mission- ary movement was for the nineteenth — has come into being, first in the form of inter-church aid, now flowering into community development, with relief supplies indiscriminately for all.
Racial tensions erupt and at once we rush off to a Cottesloe Conference in South Africa and are at any rate begin- ning, if only barely beginning, to show fruits meet for repentance at home.
Because peace is so maddeningly, frustratingly elusive, we marshal our wits with that much greater determina- tion to see how we can make our Chris- tian insights impinge directly at the places where the life-and-death deci- sions are being forged.
The more life as a whole appears like a runaway juggernaut, the more firmly we have the conviction and the resolve that our Christ must be at the controls.
The same sentiment, I do not need to labor it, is spreading conspicuously and healthily also in congregational life, with the accent increasingly on laymen precisely in their secular vocations as the salt which needs to permeate the structures of society and the light which
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ought to shine, if need be in the midst of darkness — and that is admirable too. Indeed, nothing less will do. We have come to have a right instinct that the divine drama of salvation is not to be regarded only as a spectacle to be gawked at by us as spectators. It needs to be made operative, pervasive, effec- tive in the swirling and seething world around us in these days, which is not only too much with us but which would otherwise speedily be too much for us.
The Gospel — on this much we twen- tieth century Christians are agreed — must have the smell of reality about it. But, never forget, before it can get that odor it must overridingly be real. To fit in time, above all before it can trans- form time — don’t let anyone ever over- look it — it has to be timeless.
Granted, its preachers are to be the servants of men whom God so loved — that is indispensable — but exactly for that reason they must first utterly be the servants of God, who have Jesus only in the focus of their eyes. We must never allow the music of our religion to be set so to the metronome of this world that anyone can ever fail to hear in it the strains of eternity.
Right there is our besetting tempta- tion. It is possible, in fact it has re- peatedly happened, that we can con- centrate so much on applying our Chris- tianity that we all but forget to teach our people and even to remind ourselves what it is.
A hush fell over a recent meeting of the World Council of Churches’ execu- tive committee when one of our col- leagues, a scholarly woman, read from a galley sheet of a forthcoming study book for a conference on Christian education this searching paragraph which states
the case in what may be an extreme form :
“To many people in the west such is the emphasis upon progress and the production of more goods and services that it seems beside the point to worry about one’s self with questions that are too big for definite answers anyway. What is life for? Is death the end of everything? Does a God exist and is he good? Common sense — and the scien- tific spirit too — suggest that it is wiser to concentrate on facts and to apply our knowledge to finite situations. Why bother to ask unanswerable questions? Facts are safe enough ; but vague specu- lation and chasing the heart’s desires are not, and so in a technological world many questions are left not merely un- answered but unasked.”
All this means that no matter how great our zeal for relevance is ; honor- able, even indispensable rightly seen as an extension of our Lord’s own coming into this world, as it may be ; it must always be balanced by — a better word is bathed in — an overwhelming, all- pervasive, transfiguring consciousness of the incarnate Son Himself, who has revealed to us the Father. No amount of external activity must ever be al- lowed to mask, especially from our- selves, impoverishment in the inner cita- del of the soul.
No river can stream out to fructify life outside except as a fountain of liv- ing water has first sprung up within me and you, within our minds, our hearts and all our being which flows to e- ternal life.
All of this brings sharply back to me an indelible scene from my own past to which I hope you will pardon my refer- ring. At a meeting of the Central Com-
THE PRINCETON SEMINARY BULLETIN
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mittee of the World Council of Churches at Lucknow more than a decade ago, to our shocked surprise a high official of the Indian government who had come as our guest that took it upon himself to read us a brusque lecture on the role that he insisted that missionaries should assume from then on. His country, he admitted in what sounded almost like a tone of condescension, had benefited from the schools and had appreciated the hospitals that had been established, and indeed the principal reason why he was present was to give a proper ac- knowledgment. But having said that, in the very same breath, he went on in a suddenly harsh tone, Never again would there be room for proselytization. It was an offensive kind of cultural im- perialism ; it had to stop. Missionaries from that time on ought to confine themselves to human betterment — in the jargon of today he might as well have said to things relevant to the actualities of life— in order to be accepted.
When the time came for me as pre- siding officer to reply, it was clear what I had to say. The gist of it simply was that we Christians had come to India as friends and a mark of a friend is that he feels no less than a compulsion in his heart to share his best. Clinics and col- leges are good and we have been glad to give them, but, good as they are, the minds they train will be empty; the lives they preserve can even be a mock- ery if it all ends there. The best is the joy that can be bright only as it flames from peace of soul, a peace which in turn can be steady and serene only when it issues from hope, that hope which is fruit that grows only on the vine of a living faith. This, our finest, if we are true friends, we can not withhold.
II
The second of the four paradoxes can be dealt with somewhat more summa- rily; but who can say that we do not equally feel its pinch right where we are? It is this. The Church, with no apologies at all, is an institution, but you and I must ever be on the alert to guard it against the diseases to which institu- tions are prone. I confess to having no sympathy with those who throw the word around these days as if it were an insulting epithet, a kind of popular sneer. I do not understand them at all, especially where they turn out to be the same people, as they surprisingly often do, who in the next minute are the loud- est in lamenting the sinfulness of our di- visions. One is tempted to ask, divisions of what? Not of the corpus Christi mysticum, of course, but precisely of the institution that they started out to de- plore. When will they learn that they simply cannot have it both ways? If there is to be a manifested unity, it must be in an earthly frame.
What bald inconsistency they show ! Nowhere else in life is there the slight- est disposition to prevent any other emotion or sentiment from taking a bodily form to give it effect. We look on it as the most natural and laudable thing in the world. Where is the logic to make Christian faith the one and only exception? Nobody objects when family affection issues in the home, its cor- responding institution. More emphati- cally than that, every time you and I have met a man who professed a devo- tion to the one but refused to support the other, we have known he was in- sincere. It would be grotesque to pro- test admiration for justice but cry down
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the law courts, and ridiculous to pretend to compassion for the sick but reject hospitals. Culture self-evidently requires universities and everyone knows that the benevolent impulses of a city would be reduced to ineffectiveness without the equivalent of a community chest. At the very peak of it all, just try to imag- ine a man being patriotic apart from a state !
“All public spirit,” Elihu Root was right, “all the noblest emotions that move the best of mankind are futile ex- cept through the creation of institutions to give them effect.” That is no less so also, without any cavil about it, of Christianity and the institutional church.
At the same time, we who love the church, I in a church bureaucracy and you who are just entering its ministry — agreed ! — must be argus-eyed by night and day to guard it against the temptations, the infirmities that come exactly from the fact that it has a body.
As a descendant of the Reformation, I would be among the last to be blind to that, knowing that the Reformation was not only 450 years ago but must be perpetual. The weight of the flesh can subtly stifle the spirit ! Thanks to the busy organizational beavers in the church, what was meant to be a channel of grace can so easily be dammed up and turned into a self-contained arti- ficial lake. The body of Christ can grow to be so fascinated at its own physical processes that it can forget to live for the One in whom and for whom it ex- ists. Good in itself, it is in constant peril of deflecting our loyalty from the Best. Our sonship toward the church, our mother, must never cast a shadow on our sonship toward God, our Father.
Ill
The institution and the needed vigi- lance are the opposite poles in the sec- ond paradox ; the third, which you will see at a glance constitutes just as tight a fit in our time, is between the twin calls to today’s minister to be penitent and yet affirmative. We Christians have a built-in disadvantage in our struggle against any adversaries by being hob- bled by the sense of our guilt; and seldom has it been more apparent than now. Speaking humanly, it can be car- ried so far that we can be lamed by our introspection. We can even come close to being palsied by the depressing knowledge of our imperfections as we see them in the light of God. In a life- and-death contest like the one in which we are engaged today with ruthless an- tagonists who are completely extro- verted and never deterred by the slight- est scruple or self-doubts, there are moments when this can almost seem too heavy a handicap. Of course, it never is actually as bad as that. At any rate, come what may, we must not give up penitence at any cost. We cannot and remain Christian.
A man does not have to reduce him- self to an animal in order to grapple with an animal; in fact he forfeits his advantage if he does so. Similarly in the warfare of the spirit the Christian can never afford to be less than himself.
But there are two other things that he cannot afford either. One, quickly, is to have any doubts about the sword in his hand. I am told that it is the fashion nowadays in some quarters to speculate what would have happened if the Reformation doctrine of the corrup- tion of our characters by sin so that we
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can no longer trust our motives had ex- tended to the mind so that we could no more trust our beliefs. Thank God it didn’t! The Gospel, the power of God delivered by him into our grip, would otherwise fall loosely from our hands. Relying solely on our own tentative, un- certain, hypothetical, speculative, grop- ing thoughts can lead only to paralysis.
Certainly this is not what we have learned from our eponymous confes- sional ancestors Calvin and Luther, or from Paul and John. By the grace of Christ and his Spirit, we have tem- pered steel in our grasp that insures victory ; we must never allow it to be wrenched from us by anyone alive.
A still more sinister danger, which has the added disadvantage of being even more prevalent in these days, is that unless we watch out, what starts in a right way as healthy penitence can so quickly degenerate into a negative de- featism. It is one of the endemic dis- eases of the 1960’s that that so often happens. One way to account for it is as perhaps an unconscious outcropping of the deep-going pessimism of these years. Since it is regarded as the next thing to subversive to let discouragement show through in other areas of life, many people compensate by doing so in religion where it has the extra virtue of sounding pious and high-principled. Or, at other times, it may be only an in- stinctive reflection of the national mood that has made almost an idol of broad- mindedness. There is a common feel- ing nowadays that it is necessary as a kind of lubrication in a pluralistic so- ciety for everybody to be so aware of his shortcomings that nobody will feel justified in acting very sure of himself,
especially in matters of faith. Positive- ness, where any is allowed to exist, is to be reserved for political and social opinions ; and no doubt about it, it has been. Honestly it makes me feel almost sick to see how weakly too many Chris- tians have gotten into the habit of yield- ing to this trend.
Whatever the causes, it is high time that there is an end to it; to all the dreary business of rehearsing lists of obvious failures which has almost mas- ochisticly become a kind of Protestant specialty in recent years ; an end to the field day for, if not false, then misguided friends to slur at everything the church does as mediocre, offering what nobody wants, prosaic, dull. If we do not take care, we shall come dangerously near to talking ourselves into despondency, a strange aberration indeed for those with an invincible Lord.
Be of good cheer, my friend, the church of the living God is not becom- ing unstuck or falling to pieces. Peni- tence is well enough but affirmativeness is equally needed to strike the balance of truth. Built on a rock, by His grace she still stands and I can rejoice in her, the foreshadowing of my Father’s house, the fountain from which I can drink and be refreshed, the table of forgiveness, the tower of refuge, the divinely prepared training-ground for my soul. If the Holy Spirit dwells in us, one test is that He will not speak with a cracked voice !
IV
And now, in only a few bold strokes, for the final paradox, which is in many ways the most personal, addressed di- rectly to those who stand at the brink of going out into today’s ministry, Put
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the Gospel of obedience ahead of the Gospel of success. Sometimes there is an antithesis, a dramatic oppositeness, between these two also. More than once you will find yourselves confronted with a straight-out choice.
There are few people alive with whom I have less patience than those — and some prominent and formidable figures are numbered among them — who would like, often unconsciously, to twist the Kingdom of God to serve sec- ondary ends. Granted that when Chris- tianity is planted in men’s hearts and flourishes in a land, law and order be- come more secure and juvenile delin- quency is on the wane. We thank God for it and should count them as appreci- ated by-products, but one would have a distorted focus if he imagines that they are what our faith in God through Christ is primarily for, the one thing that it is designed to do. Nor — dare I say it? — is the free enterprise system, not even the defense of democracy, high- ly as I esteem one and devoted from the depths of my being as I am to the other. The best that can be said is that democratic institutions have more often than not come like a natural flowering wherever the Christian faith has first been firmly rooted in men’s lives. The main aim, towering above all the rest, single and unique, is none of these. It is so much higher than all the others that it soars above them. It is simply to raise frail men to the stature of sons of God. It is to feed hungry hearts ; to give a footing to those who would fall on which they can rise. It is for that that so God loved the world. For that we are called and must render our obe- dience.
Even if the pitfall of secondary aims
is avoided, once we are wholly given to the primary work of the church, even then we are not yet safe. One more net lies seductively in the path of every min- ister today to which I call on you to be alert. It is the most insinuating tempta- tion of all : to j udge what ought to be our ministry in spiritual things by the entirely foreign yardsticks of this world.
It is frightening to see the subtle kind of osmosis that brings secular standards right into the house of God.
In matters of church union — I know because I am right now engaged in one — you can guess what is the most fre- quently asked question. It is : How much heightened prestige will it bring? Or what will be the increase in effi- ciency? Or how will it build a stronger front against a named rival ? All of that is oddly off the point. For shame on those who ask and on anyone who even calculates an answer. When will our proud hearts learn that His motives are not prudential as ours too often are, that God refuses to be cramped into our mean ambitions, that the only test is that His will shall be done ?
The same thing will be true where- ever you serve, bitter as it is for the old Adam to learn it. If it is in a foreign field, the decisive factor is not where we are tempted to look for it, in the fertility of the soil. Our missionary ef- fort cannot one day longer indulge in the illusion that it is cultivating spiritu- al provinces for the glory of the church back home. If anyone does that, he is disqualified at once. Those days, for the health of our souls, are dead and gone forever. The one, the only thing that will matter — Oh, when will we learn it ? — is abandon in his obedience.
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And in America, America which is no longer out of this world but embar- rassingly a part of it, it will be no dif- ferent. Here at home just as truly, one after another, the old marks of success, which used to be such a tempting coun- terfeit of a spiritual service of God, are i being exposed as shoddy too. What we used to call progress, the tangible things that could be dehydrated into impres- sive statistics, have frighteningly but salutarily begun to be shaken — and it is good that they have. The most settled parish that you can enter into has be- come a testing frontier where a man needs to venture in faith. My prayer is that God will grant that true values will
shine in your eyes as in his ! The Lord take the charm for you from the copper of success and sublimate it in your lives into the gold of obedience.
The Gospel relevant and timeless. The Church rightly an institution but needing to be protected against the ill- nesses to which, as an institution, it is altogether too prone. Our witness peni- tent but unflinchingly affirmative. Your lives not obeying in order to succeed but winning through to the only true success in Christ’s ministry, that which comes from a quiet obedience to our Lord.
God speed you as you go and this noble school as it lives on !
SESQUICENTENNIAL
LECTURESHIPS
November 12-16 , 1962
THE L. P. STONE LECTURESHIP The Reverend Paul L. Lehmann, Th.D., D.D.
THE STUDENTS’ LECTURESHIP ON MISSIONS The Reverend John A. Mackay, D.D., LL.D., Litt.D.
THE ANNIE KINKEAD WARFIELD LECTURESHIP The Reverend Kenneth J. Foreman, Ph.D., D.D.
ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN
Jas. I. McCord
It is not possible for me to address the Sesquicentennial Class of Prince- ton Theological Seminary without be- ginning on a personal note. You and I came to Princeton in the fall of 1959, all of us juniors, and many of you were in my first class here. From that Sep- tember when we began with the theol- ogy of the pre-Socratics, I have had a feeling of genuine solidarity with you, and to you I owe a great debt of grati- tude. I salute you as you enter the min- istry of the Church of Jesus Christ, and I am confident that the life of the Church will be enriched by your gifts and by your commitment.
Let my words of farewell be very brief. They begin with verses from St. Paul’s first Corinthian letter :
For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.
And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law ;
To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ), that I might gain them that are without law.
To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak : I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.
And this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you.
(I Corinthians 9:19-23)
Canon Warren has called this “the most dangerous program ever adum- brated,’’ and I am suggesting that no less dangerous program will be worthy of your ministry. The most urgent ques- tion you will meet the moment your ministry moves out of the shelter of the Church into the world is how is Chris- tian witness possible today in a world that is rapidly being reshaped into an order that is closed and one-dimen- sional. And, further, what is the nature of this witness which in Christ’s name we bear ?
These bold words of St. Paul de- scribe the nature of his witness. It be- gan with his entering into the experi- ences of those around him, with his becoming “all things to all men,” and with his making their experiences his own. He was not afraid of the world. He understood that his own witness to the power of the Gospel was possible at the price of his becoming one with all conditions of men, for only then could he make their questions his questions and avoid the risk of supplying solutions to problems no longer being raised.
Wasn’t it Gertrude Stein, when on her death bed, who turned to her friend Alice Toklas and asked, “Alice, what is the answer?” Alice looked at her sadly and said, “Gertrude, I am afraid we don’t know.” After a long pause, Miss
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Stein said, “Well, then, Alice, what is the question?”
The question, after all, is the im- portant thing. It is cheap and easy to give glib answers to old questions, to inquiries no longer made, and to prob- lems our fathers solved, and to refuse to pay the price of learning the agoniz- ingly real questions that are being asked by your contemporaries. You will want to deal with more than surface symp- toms which may be met with half truths and partial answers. You will
want to probe the depths of man’s be- ing, where he becomes aware of the problems of life and death. And you will not know all the answers, but you may have every assurance that by giv- ing prior attention to the questions, you will be in a position to trust the Holy Spirit to supply the answers in your own ministry.
May the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
The Gospels see everything against the background of that final consummation which will bring the labored story of human life to its close, and which waits from day to day only the hidden counsels of God. Indeed, from Genesis to Revelation the end is always there. It is the context of every book, the undertone of every hallelujah. But it is not there as catastrophe ; certainly not as meaningless catastrophe, canceling every item of the past and present, reducing it all to dust and nothingness. It is there as victory — that victory which the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ celebrate and, to say the whole truth, inaugurate, in the very face of life’s dismal word finished. It is there to solemnize every beginning, to read every chapter as if there were no other, to see in all days the last days, to turn history itself into one great now of judgment, to make of each moment a moment of high decision in the loving-kindness of God.
— Paul Scherer, in Love Is a Spendthrift, Harper & Brothers, 1961, p. 6.
KERYGMA AND DISCIPLESHIP
THE BASIS OF NEW TESTAMENT ETHICS Otto A. Piper
The Uniqueness of New Testament Ethics
Not until the eighteenth century did Protestant theology treat Christian Ethics as an independent subject. It was taken for granted that the Christian life fell under the pur- view of theology, and had to be dis- cussed under the headings of Law and Holy Spirit. While, for practical pur- poses, philosophical ethics nurtured by Aristotle’s writings was taught in the curriculum of the Arts faculties of the universities, the fact was clearly recog- nized that it had its foundation in Nat- ural Law, and thus had no direct rela- tionship with the life of faith. But the Enlightenment of the eighteenth cen- tury, which regarded Jesus onesidedly as the great teacher of mankind, identi- fied his teaching with morals. The the- ology of the nineteenth century, particu- larly under the influence of Schleier- macher, was anxious to regain some of the lost ground. But the theologians were overawed by the authority of Kant, and thus, though recognizing that the New Testament had its own set of ethi- cal standards, Protestant theology tried in various ways to show that they had a rational root in human nature. This meant that Christian Ethics had to de- velop its own method independent of dogmatics. Christian conduct was no longer understood as being rooted in man’s faith but rather faith had to be justified in ethical terms.
Recent Biblical scholarship begins to realize, however, that such an approach is not fit to do justice to the New Tes- tament. By treating ethics as an auton- omous science the scholar lost sight of the true meaning of conduct as it was described in the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament. For in the eyes of the Primitive Church, Jesus was not only a teacher or an example of good life but also a leader who bade people to follow him, and by the way he lived his life, he determined the circumstances in which his disciples were to follow him. But where do we find the com- mon denominator of the ethical teach- ing and the actual conduct of Jesus? We can hardly start from a supreme idea such as love, justice, purity or faith. For it should be obvious that the mean- ing of the ethical commandments dif- fers according to the kind of community within which they are to be realized, and according to the abilities and re- sources which people are supposed to possess for the realization of the true life. The principal question which we have to ask, is therefore that of the actual setting in which the believer has to live and to realize the supreme good.
The New Testament has a very sim- ple answer: true life is life with Jesus. This holds good not only for his earthly life and his intercourse with his dis- ciples, but also for his participation in the life of the Church in his risen state, as can be learned from an unbiased study of the Acts of the Apostles, the
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Epistles, and the Revelation of John.
In Acts, for example, Luke is anx- ious to show that not a single one of the decisive and epoch-making events in the life of the Primitive Church hap- pened in a purely incidental way. They came to pass as a result of the determi- nation of the people concerned never to follow their own imaginations, but rather to be guided by their risen Lord and his Spirit. In a similar manner, the Revelation of John describes the life of the Church under persecution as be- ing fashioned by obedience to the risen Lord or lack thereof. Among the au- thors of the New Testament letters, Paul brings out most decisively the fact that his whole activity as an Apostle was conditioned by his faith, that is to say by the personal relationship in which he stood with his Master. For practical purposes, however, it will be advisable to start the study of New Tes- tament ethics from the Gospels, because in them the disciples’ intercourse with Jesus is described most graphically.
Although Jesus is called the friend of his disciples, their mutual relation- ship was not a purely sentimental one. The kind of fellowship that Jesus of- fered to those who were willing to fol- low him, was that of a teacher with his pupils. To his contemporaries, and in particular to his disciples, Jesus ap- peared as a teacher, who in his methods had much in common with the Jewish scribes (e.g., Mk. 4:38; 9:38; 10:35; 13 :i ; Lk. 21 :y), and Jesus himself used the title “teacher” as self-designation (e.g., Mt. 10:24; Lk. 6:40; Mt. 23:8; 26:18; Mk. 14:14). But equally re- markable is the fact that outside of the Synoptic Gospels Jesus is nowhere in the New Testament referred to as
teacher. The appellation is reserved to the teachers of the Church. The reason is obvious. The disciples were aware of the uniqueness of Jesus’ teaching. Unlike that of the rabbis, it carried spiritual authority with it (e.g., Mk. 1:22; Mt. 7:29; Mk. 1:27; 11:18), that is to say, it had a compelling and convincing effect. Furthermore, people realized the “newness” of his teaching (Mk. 1 :27). In its surprising original- ity it struck them as indicating the dawn of the final age. They sensed that his message was rooted in the very ground of reality and thus it made manifest the true meaning of life.
The disciples were consistently made aware of the unique character of the re- lationship in which they stood with Je- sus. By forbidding them to be called “teacher” (Mt. 23:8; cp. Mt. 10:24; Lk. 6:40) Jesus claims for himself an exclusive role vis-a-vis of them, because he was himself the very source of his teaching. All those who followed him would therefore remain dependent on the message he conveyed to them. The true character of Jesus’ teaching can best be seen in his denunciation of the scribes, that is to say, the official teach- ers of Israel (Mk. 12:38-40). The “teacher” Jesus was then proclaiming the divine Judgment upon them. It is this kind of teaching that Jesus will con- tinue beyond his death. To his disciples, he promised that in times of persecution they would be taught by the Holy Spirit (Mk. 13:11; Mt. 10:19; Lk. 12:12). As his own teaching was conditioned by the Spirit of God who in his Baptism had descended upon him (Mk. 1:10; Mt. 3:16; Lk. 3:22), so would that Spirit, who had become one with him, continue to teach them.
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Law and Kerygma
What was the supreme value by which Jesus was guided both in his teaching and in his conduct ? According to the Synoptists, the teaching of Jesus was not primarily ethical but rather it concerned itself with the coming of God’s Kingdom or kingly rule here on earth. To this eschatological message, the ethical teaching of Jesus might be related in two different ways. The an- nouncement of the Kingdom can be re- garded as furnishing the setting for the activities of the believers (cf. Schlat- ter, Amos Wilder), or the Kingdom may be interpreted as the goal and re- sult of the Christian efforts (cf. Kant, Ritschl, the Social Gospel). Those scholars who consider Jesus’ eschato- logical teaching as a mere adaptation to popular language overlook the fact that his whole teaching is tinged with escha- tological language. This leads one to the conclusion that Jesus’ ethical in- struction was rooted in his eschato- logical proclamation. Understood apart from the fact that God is now establish- ing his realm here on earth, the Sermon on the Mount would be excessive ideal- ism or pathological, self-destructive fa- naticism. But when Albert Schweitzer interprets Matt. 5-7 as “interimistic eth- ics” to be practiced during the short in- terval between the day of its proclama- tion and the breaking in of the Day of Yahve only, he misunderstands com- pletely the message of Jesus. For with the ministry of Jesus, the power of God’s Kingdom is already at work in this world, and those in whom it oper- ates will be able to act as described in the Sermon on the Mount.
Similarly, the authority, which Jesus claims for his ethical teaching, is rooted
in the fact that he participates in the eschatological process as an insider ; he is part of that process himself. Hence, even when he refers to the Old Testa- ment it is not as a given authority which has to be interpreted in a casuistic way — so did the scribes — but rather Jesus can point out what the original inten- tion of the divine lawgiver has been, e.g., in the matter of divorce (Mk. 10: 2-9). In other words, it is as the Son of God that Jesus offers his ethical teaching. He is capable of instructing people in such unique manner because he ‘sees’ God. He comprehends the di- vine will from within God’s operation, whereas the rabbis are dealing with an infallible commandment, whose inter- pretation, however, is the victim of man’s limited knowledge and compre- hension. The Synoptists and John agree on this characterization of Jesus’ teach- ing (e.g., Mt. 11 125-30; Lk. 10:21-24; John 6:40; 8:38). Thus Law and Ke- rygma are seen by him as emanating from a common source, namely God’s redemptive purpose. Consequently the commandments given by Jesus are de- scriptions of the life he lives, and which his followers are promised to receive. Hence, the imperative form of the state- ments gives expression to the absolute necessity under which man stands, when confronted with God. Thus Jesus in- dicates that he has no choice concerning the way and the goal of his ministry. The strange kind of life he lives he is compelled to live, if he is to be faithful to his mission and nature.
His mission Jesus defines as his com- ing to fulfil the Law and the Prophets (Mt. 5:17). As the context and the Old Testament meaning of the verb pleroo show, this characterization does not mean that by making such a pre-
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tentious statement, Jesus wanted to un- derline his perfect compliance with the Law. Rather “to fulfill” has an eschato- logical connotation. The purpose for which God had given the Law and sent the Prophets was eventually being real- i ized in the ministry of Jesus. By em- phasizing that the decisive event in the history of mankind issues from God, Jesus enjoins men to consider their lives as given to them for God’s sake. Such perspective is absent both from the vari- ous schools of philosophical ethics as also from the rabbinical interpretation of the Torah, all of which are based upon a man-centered attitude. Quite apart from its concomitant exhorta- tions, Jesus’ message of the advent of the Kingdom subjects the whole life of man to the service of God’s purpose. Conversely, the divine proclamation of the Mosaic Law was in the eyes of Je- sus intended to remind people of the fact that by nature they were inclined to disregard God’s will. Accordingly, the obstacles which people encounter on the way to what in their egotism they regard their supreme good, be it self- perfection or happiness, existential self- realization or a perfect world order, are explained in the light of the divine com- mandments as being placed there by God in order to remind man of the falsehood of his evaluations. No matter how passionately he may crave for free- dom, man is doomed as a sinner to live in a world of limitations by which his activities are hemmed in from all sides.
The Law itself is interpreted by Je- sus as such a limitation. Whereas not only secular ethics but also many of the theological ethics start from the as- sumption that the moral law is an in- dication of the moral goodness of man, and that only incidentally it is to warn
him also against transgressions, Jesus teaches his disciples that it is to sinful people that God has given his Law, and that divine permissions, as, e.g., that of divorce, are reminders of their sin- fulness (Mk. 10:5). Even God’s chosen people, far from being good, have turned away from him so completely that with- out the provisions of the Law it would disintegrate. Thus shows, that when adopted apart from Jesus’ ministry, the Law lacks the strength to bring about goodness. While this condition does not prevent man from doing things which are beneficial to others (e.g., Mt. 7:11 ; Lk. 11:13), they, nevertheless, do not serve the end for which man was made by God. For God created him that through his life he should manifest the glory of his maker. Yet in our ‘natural’ goodness, we contrive actions the bene- ficial effects of which are confined to the group with which the individual associates, and they serve practical ends only.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the kerygma of the advent of God’s kingly rule should be coupled by Jesus with the call to repentance, that is to say, return to God. The significance of this demand has frequently been mis- understood, because hereby the keryg- ma, too, is made to approach man under the form of an imperative. Thus the difference of the two Testaments seems to be at the best one of degree only. Actually, however, the divine behest has never changed (I John 2 :6-8). The change which Jesus proclaims is one of the situation only, in which God’s word reaches man. Formerly the divine de- mand had been received in ‘darkness,’ namely within the narrow perspective of a life, in which people tried to make the best of their own shortcomings and the
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evils of this world. While the knowl- edge of what is right and the ability to act accordingly are found in all men (e.g., the story of the Good Samaritan, Lk. 10:29-37) ^ is the “hardness” of man’s heart which renders him disin- clined most of the time actually to do God’s will.
Following Jesus
That even in the age of faith the dis- closure of the purpose of God should be addressed to man in the form of a commandment is an indication of man’s inability instinctively or of himself to make the transition from darkness to light. No wonder, therefore, that a great deal of Jesus’ teaching should assume the grammatical form of an imperative. But as the evangelists emphasized the complete newness of that teaching, they illustrated its paradoxical demands by recording numerous instances of Jesus’ dealing with other people. Quite apart from the personal charm deployed in many of them, they exhibit the new vision of life that Jesus had and that he conveyed not so much by means of the- oretical discussions but rather by his conduct.
Having in himself that new life, that is to say, life as God intended it to be, was the cause of the irresistible power by which people were attracted to Jesus. Yet the Gospels show also that the dis- ciples were not immediately aware of what this inseparable combination of teaching and personality meant. Not un- til Pentecost did they realize for the first time the full splendor of the new vision which the Saviour had imparted to them. In their eyes, he was not the sinless one only, i.e. a man who had never transgressed the Law, but rather the Righteous One (e.g., Acts 3:14; I
John 2:1, cp. Mt. 5:20), that is to say a man who beyond the letter of the Law had complied with God’s demand, and who therefore was the faithful witness (Rev. 1:5; 3:14), i.e. the one who evidenced man’s ability to realize the purpose for which God had created him. The modern Protestant antipathy against the Law, supported allegedly by the primacy of the Gospel, or of Love, completely misunderstands Jesus. There is no contrast between Law and Gos- pel, rather the good news of the coming of God’s Kingdom has become reality in Jesus’ re-establishing the cosmic or- der, in which everybody and everything receives the place for which it is des- tined.
By the sovereignty, with which Jesus brushes away all the obstacles that sepa- rate people from each other and from God, and prevent them from reaching their destination, Jesus proves his lord- ship. The disciples realized soon after he had called them that their relation- ship to him was not built upon the basis of personal allegiance or pedagogic eros. Jesus’ call required from the out- set belief in his sovereignty and his di- vine mission. In turn, it was this belief of the disciples, fragmentary and weak as it was, that survived the death of their master and made the apostles bold to contend that the risen one was pres- ent in the midst of their fellowship. The spiritual growth which the disciples ex- perienced as they followed Jesus can be learned from the way in which they spoke and acted as leaders of the Primi- tive Church, and from the profound yet realistic manner in which the new life is described in their letters.
The vision of the new life, as the New Testament understands it, com- prises not only the destination which
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God has assigned to man, but also the central significance which Jesus has in the actualization of that life. Hence, when he called people to follow him, our Lord was not just a teacher anxious to have students. He wanted his Dis- ciples “to be with him” (Mk. 3:14), that is to say to share his life and mes- sianic ministry. This did not mean, as later generations so frequently under- stood it, that the Disciples were to imi- tate Jesus’ life. The New Testament records leave no doubt concerning the difference between the Master and his disciples (e.g., Mk. 6:13; 9:18 par.). What they had in common with him was first of all the common pursuit of that new vision of a God-given life, and, as a result, their willingness to accept the way, on which Jesus led them, as an expression of his genuine under- standing of God’s redemptive will. Hence the apostles were ready to pre- pare God’s chosen people for the even- tual manifestation of the Messiah’s glo- ry, no less than to endure with the Mas- ter all the hardships and hostile acts that were implied in such an endeavor.
Modern Protestant theology seems to be eager to correct the work of Jesus by contending that social and international activities are absolutely necessary as primary evidences of a Christian life. But while Jesus did not disparage good works, he pointed out, nevertheless, that there was an order of spiritual growth, and unless first things were given priority no spiritual fruits could be expected. Basic requirements of a true life are humility, purity of heart, trust in God’s power and faithfulness even in the most insignificant matters. Man’s principal goal is the building up of God’s people here on earth. Most urgent therefore is the willingness to
serve others rather than to pursue one’s own interests, and the restoration of brotherly relationships, wherever they have been spurned or disregarded or disturbed. This obligation takes prece- dence even of the prescribed acts of worship (Mt. 5:23-24). Since the fel- lowman lives in this world, those who follow Jesus cannot withdraw from it into a dream world or a self-chosen solitude. Yet their attitude will be one of compassionate love anxious to trans- form this world rather than an accept- ance hereof as it is. By living with Je- sus, the disciples learnt no longer to be afraid of the seemingly uncontrolla- ble forces of the universe and their en- mity, for they saw how by the power of faith their Master triumphed over them. A further important lesson the disciples appropriated was the experi- ence of guidance and strength that comes to people who consort in a fel- lowship whose common goal transcends the interests of each and all of them. By their willingness to dedicate their lives to God’s cause, that is to say to foster the advancement of his Kingdom, they felt the Holy Spirit working in their hearts as a power which not only enlightened them but also moved them to overcome their own reluctance and fear.
The records of the New Testament indicate clearly that this life of dis- cipleship was an unconspicuous life. There were not many outstanding deeds in the Primitive Church, otherwise ref- erence would be made of them. Rather the early Christians shared their daily life, its needs and its chores. Yet it was not, what through a misunderstanding of Bonhoefifer, is considered a flight in- to secularly. While not everyone per- formed the work of an Apostle or an
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evangelist, all felt responsible for the propagation of the Gospel, and they considered common worship and com- mon religious instruction essential fea- tures of their fellowship (Acts 2 142, 46).
The Lord of the Church
What is described in the New Testa- ment as the life of the disciples, is to serve as an example for all the Chris- tians. But what does discipleship mean for us who are no longer privileged to walk with Jesus? Well, above all, we should remember that as in the days of Jesus, the Kingdom is something to be sought. For what matters, is Christ’s work rather than his mere presence among us. The progress of God’s re- demptive work, although it has never ceased, is nevertheless not something that is immediately obvious. What in our seeking we discover is, negatively, the fact that despite the American en- thusiasm for international action, civil rights and social justice, there is no hope of doing God’s will in those areas, unless we apply the Christian attitude of faith to them, that is to say, trust in God, willingness to serve, humility and purity of heart. Apart from faith, the change accomplished may alter the structure of social life, but it leaves the basic problems unsolved, pace the con- dition of the negroes in the northern states of the USA, notwithstanding their emancipation.
Positively, two facts should be taken into consideration. Firstly, the Church still enjoys the presence and the fellow- ship of the risen Lord, and thus it has
not only powers at its disposal by which the pattern of this world can be radi- cally transformed, but its history itself is the result of the constant guidance given to it by Jesus. Events such as, for example, the ecumenical movement, the feeling of spiritual dissatisfaction in today’s churches, or the groping for a theology of facts instead of a theology of words, must be understood as symp- toms of the work that the risen Lord carries on in its midst, and hence they demand appropriate action. Secondly, the vision of the new life which Jesus implanted into the Twelve, is still with us. It is not a rigid set of command- ments or a system of established vir- tues, but rather it constantly remodels itself in the course of Church history, as the Spirit moves Christians to apply their faith to changing historical situa- tions. Thus the Church occupies a two- fold position in the believer’s life. It is the Body of the risen Lord, through which the individual is conditioned and guided, and it is at the same time a so- cial institution in this world, to whose quickening the believer’s effort is de- voted. This explains the paradox of the Christian life. The believer is not anx- ious to bring about a new and better world, but either he wants to do what Jesus through the Spirit urges him to perform. Yet when doing so, he is used by his Lord as his agent through whose activity a new world comes into being which is not different only but also bet- ter than all the improvements which purely human activity is able to bring about.
THE LIGHT OF MEN
H. Ganse Little
In him was life and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. — John I ‘.4, 5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the begin- ning with God ; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life. And the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” That is to say, God comes first ! The Bible never presents God as static, fixed, aloof, far away, immured in an unknowable and unconcerned isolation booth. The Bible always talks about God as having given abundant proof to man that he is at the integral core of his Being what John calls “the Word” — i.e., that which to God is what a man’s word and thought are to that man or that which in a man impels him to initiate action.
Indeed, the word and thought which make a man “a man under God,” en- abling him to think, to communicate, and to act, constitute in themselves man’s response to God’s initiating word and thought and act. Such is the Biblical meaning of man “made in the image of God” — capable of creative response to God’s creative Word.
In the metaphor of our text, there is light in man — the light of reason, the light of faith, the light of creative thought and action, the light of love because there is first, last, and all the time, God taking the initiative, God on the move, God creating and then visit-
ing man through his challenging, de- manding, insistent Word.
In this sense, “God comes first.” God is not just “first,” that is only part of the truth for the Bible and for Chris- tian faith. God comes first, God always makes the first move. God always “beats man to it,” so to speak.
My mind goes back to a group of boys madly undressing beside a creek in the Ozarks, the urge to jump into the “old swimming hole” accelerated by the challenging cry. “Last one in’s a pole cat!” God is more circumspect and less given to the vernacular in his chal- lenge, but he challenges man neverthe- less ! And man in immersing himself in any aspect of life, or truth, or freedom, or love is always responding. God, the Spirit of God, God through his Word, has already and always created and of- fered the life, the truth, the freedom and the love which man finally enters into, “discovers,” shares.
Another way of stating this is to say, God through his eternal, initiating Word is the first and continually-at- work Creator, Inventor, Teacher, and Saviour of mankind.
It is because of the impact, influx, infiltration of his life through his Word that man possesses “Light” — the light of reason, of truth, of freedom, of love.
The Psalmist heralds the same con- viction as the gospel writer : “With Thee is the fountain of life ; in thy light shall we see light!” “In him was life and the
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life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”
It is important to bear in mind just here that there are two kinds of “dark- ness” in this world — figuratively speak- ing— and John so speaks: There is the darkness God creates — and there is the darkness man creates.
There is the darkness into which God “calls” or introduces man, the darkness in which God then bids the light to shine, the darkness in which God bids man look upon the light. And there is the darkness man embraces by shutting out the light, by shutting his eyes to the light, by turning his back upon the light.
The Bible and our own experience and faith do not equate all darkness with sin and evil. Only that darkness in which man still wants to hide himself after he has seen the light is evil and is sin.
There is a startling implication in this regard in the opening verses of Genesis which describe — again in figur- ative language — God’s initial act in Creation : “In the beginning of God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form and void, and darkness covered the deep, and the Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be Light.’ And there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the dark- ness, and God called the light, day, and the darkness, night.”
That is to say, God created both light and darkness — and he created darkness first. Then he created the light, estab- lishing a clear distinction and alterna- tion between the two. First darkness — and then light — “And there was eve- ning and there was morning, one day” !
Moreover, God declared the light to be “good.” But he did not state the darkness to be evil. The darkness is too primitive, too static, either to create or sustain life in any of its higher forms !
Light must shine in the darkness if the passive, primordial, pulsating in- nocence and ignorance which is life in the dark is ever to be stimulated, chal- lenged, to grow, to learn, to change, to reach out and up, to explore, to achieve at last that God-destined level of life where Word and Thought and Action combine in love to create the life more abundant !
Every man is born under God into a kind of darkness into which God’s light shines. This soft, lovely, primitive, in- adequate yet inviting darkness is the innocency of the tiny baby. This in- nocency (which means utter lack of knowledge) tugs at our heartstrings. We ourselves as adults long often to return to its comfortable darkness and unawareness. Oh, not to have to grow any more, to learn, to change, to act responsibly upon the basis of that which we have learned, and grown into, and become ! This is the desire to “regress,” to become a little child again, to slip back into the soft, safe, cozy passivity of darkness.
Man is created in this state of “in- nocence” in this pristine, primitive, dark ignorance of life and love and freedom and truth. As of the hour of his birth, man knows nothing about life, until “light goes up in his darkness,” until he is approached in love with an offer of life and truth and freedom to which he responds. This response is growth into responsible maturity as a man.
Once the light is seen for what it is — a stimulus, a pressure, an induce- ment, indeed, often a painful goad — to
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\ change and growth, a challenge calling the child into manhood, calling for re- sponse and obedience; once the light is i seen and man fails to respond, to obey, shuts his eyes, turns his head, turns his back to the light, embraces his darkness i as the security he knows and loves the best, then that resultant darkness is dif- ferent from what it was before ; it is evil and Sin for him.
Jesus said, “Men love darkness (not because the darkness is evil) rather than light, because their deeds are evil,” most particularly the deed of rejecting light and embracing darkness and so turning away from growth into the life more abundant.
Now John asserts in his gospel that all this energizing Word of God — this life-inducing light — blazed forth in our flesh, in our world, in our human his- tory in the person of the man Christ Jesus. And he goes on in his Prologue, “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory like as of the only son of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
This is the meaning of the word in Isaiah : “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light ; and they who sat in the land of deep dark- ness, upon them hath the light shined.” This is the meaning of Zachariah’s hymn of praise upon the birth of his son John, who was to be known as the Bap- tist, the forerunner of the Christ : “. . . whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us ; to give light unto them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
These are passages we usually asso- ciate only with Christmas. We properly do so at that festal time. But this is the story of Jesus Christ, the light of men,
the light of the world. This is the tale of the Mass of Christ, of Christ’s Mass. “Mass” derives from the Latin verb “sent.” The gospel is the good news of Christ’s “sent-ness,” of “the Word made flesh,” of God coming first into man’s darkness, of the continual avail- ability of the power of God unto salva- tion. “The true light which lighteneth every man was coming into the world.”
Only in the light of the life of Christ do we see light, i.e., do men come to know themselves, to understand life, to grow in the responsible utilization of life and truth and freedom in love.
Take three deliberately chosen and quite disparate areas of man’s life and see how helpless and despairing and fearful is man’s situation in his vain attempt to understand and use good things for good ends in his life — apart from God in Christ — only to discover that good things become in his fum- bling darkness instruments of death and hell.
I
Take the use of alcohol, first. Only the man who sees life in the light of the life and love of Jesus Christ can con- ceivably know how to handle what many sincere Christians believe to be a poten- tially good thing in life — alcohol used in moderation.
If Christ has saved a man from bore- dom, from despair, from frustration, from hatred of himself and life, from resentment of others, from hostility to- wards his family, from the childishness of always having to prove his freedom by showing he doesn’t know how to handle it ; if Christ has saved man from these things, then he is set free to enjoy another thing in life in moderation upon occasion — and he is set free not so to
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drink even in moderation upon other oc- casions where the welfare and safety of others are involved — both decisions be- ing freely his to make in his continual awareness of the meaning of life in Christ.
If a man drinks to escape life, to avoid the challenge of responsible maturity, to drown the inevitable sorrows which accompany change and growth, to hide himself from himself, to regress from adult living in a give and take world back into the darkness of the irrespon- sible unconsciousness of childhood, he is literally “lost.” He isn’t lost because he drinks, he drinks because he’s lost.
The issue is not “to drink or not to drink,” the issue is, a man’s freedom to drink and not to drink each in accord with a penetrating understanding of his own life and the lives of others as seen in the light of the life of Christ.
II
Take next the awesome power for good which is atomic energy. Only as man sees the life of mankind under God in Christ dare man make use of the tremendous energy he has unlocked from God’s storehouse with the help of God’s freely given light of reason for the life of mankind rather than for the death of mankind.
The issue again is not : is man usurp- ing the power of God like Prometheus of ancient Greek myth ; the issue is : has man’s life been sufficiently condi- tioned by the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ so that man is free to use his awesome possession in terms of the values taught and exempli- fied in Christ? The stark realism of the Old Testament fits our dilemma today: “Behold, saith the Lord, I have set before you life and death. Choose
life !” The New Testament would say, “Choose Christ — who is the way, the truth, and the life !” Man is so tempted to choose himself — and death.
In our beloved land our thought gives evidence of substantial regression from that day at the outset of World War II when we were filled with horror at the saturation bombing of Rotterdam. Nor does the testimony of many experts in the field that we might have secured the same end result near the close of that same conflict by dropping a demonstra- tion atomic bomb harmlessly in the Pacific rather than decimating Hiro- shima and Nagasaki lull our consciences to sleep.
Once more, the issue is not : “I would rather be dead than Red.” It is not even, “I would rather be dead than alive under any given set of circum- stances.” The first is a falsely stated set of alternatives. The second is not a live option for a committed Christian. The issue is : “In the light of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, do we commit ourselves to the thesis : We are willing to destroy the world of men, if in our judgment that is neces- sary, for the sake of the life more abundant !” ?
Ill
Finally, and surprisingly perhaps, take “religion.” Apart from the light of the whole life and love of God as re- vealed in Jesus Christ, religion is the most destructive, vicious, evil power man can bend to his own selfish de- vices.
How Jesus Christ castigated “reli- gion” and religious people! Religion is man cutting God down to his size — to the kind, color, and creed of his nation, his race, his economic philosophy, his
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cultural heritage, and the pattern of his morality. Religion is God made in man’s image. Religion is man shutting his eyes to God as seen in Jesus Christ, turning his back to the light of Christ, and peering into a mirror darkly, sees his own shadowy image with the help of the very light he denies, and cries out, “Thou art my God.”
The greatest enemy of the light of God in Christ is “religion” — including much that passes for Christianity ! Apart from Jesus Christ, religion in- cluding Christianity inevitably becomes degraded by superstition, bigotry, prej- udice, provincialism, hostility, igno- rance, selfishness and sin. “In him was life and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” Over and over again, man turns his back upon God as seen in Jesus Christ and in the darkness of that perverse turning away, seeks to fashion out of his own moralism, scientism, religion, a scheme of salvation more congenial to his fear and pride. And man seems to get away with it, doesn’t he? “How futile,” we cry, “is the name and claim of Christ in the lives of men. How pitifully ineffective is the light of his life in this dark world where men love the darkness rather than the light !”
But God declares this judgment to be too hasty, to be itself a product of man’s turning away from Christ, the too fear- ful, too wishful thinking of a closed mind rationalizing behind closed eyes.
God in Christ still comes first, last and all the time ! The cry of the Psalmist reflects this painful pressure: “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from thy pres- ence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there : if I make my bed in hell, be-
hold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the utter- most parts of the sea ; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, surely the dark- ness shall cover me : even the night shall be light without me. Yea, the dark- ness hideth me not from Thee !”
The Word of God is more powerful than any two-edged sword (than mega- ton hydrogen bomb) — more powerful even than the most intransigent and savage enemy of all — the heart of man. Thus the voice of Isaiah speaks for God, “My Word shall not return unto me void, but shall accomplish the pur- pose whereto I sent it.”
The sign, symbol, and seal of this promise is the fact of the resurrection ! On this first day after another celebra- tion of Easter — and in this post-Easter world — we glory in the vacated sepul- chre. At its open door, “See the Christ stand !” Once and for all time, the hand of God has violated the hiding place of death. Light streams forth out of the darkness of the tomb of man’s faithless- ness and fear. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God rejects man’s rejec- tion of the light. God thunders an Ever- lasting “Yea and Amen” to man’s pro- testing “Nay and Never.” The seven words of the cross are followed by the last word of all — the first Word from the grave! “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of this present age.” In such a day surely the word of an honored school of the prophets to the world of men remains one and the same: “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
. . . We have this treasure in earthen
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vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. . . . We too believe, and so we speak knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.”
God in Christ, the Word made flesh,
has great staying power, a limitless power of penetration : kingdoms will come and go ; nations wax and wane ; economies rise and fall; philosophies and religions flourish and decline, but “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, to- day and forever.”
“In him was life and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”
There is a theological dimension in institutional as well as individual appraisal. The theo- logical dimension, even though it complicates evaluation and provides great theoretical diffi- culties for the scientific investigator, gives a depth and meaning to Christian education evaluation that would otherwise be lacking. In fact, without thorough attention to the theo- logical dimension, Christian education evaluation would be so meaningless as to be im- possible.
What is this theological dimension? Simply put, it is the assertion that in Christian edu- cation there is much more than meets the eye, and that this “more than meets the eye” con- sists of the dynamic work of God in man’s midst : his purposes, his mighty acts, and the work of his Holy Spirit.
— D. Campbell Wyckoff, in How to Evaluate Your Christian Education Program, Westminster, 1962, p. 21.
PROPHET AND PRIEST, BUT NOT A KING
Eugene Carson Blake
And he said to them, ‘The Kings of the Gentiles exercise Lordship over them; and those in authority over them are called Benefactors. But not so with you; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.’ — Luke 22 125, 26
I want to speak to you today about your ministry. As you are gradu- ated from Theological Seminary this week, you go out from this place to your new places in the life of the Church. How you conceive of your ministry of word and sacrament will be important not only as you begin it, but also all through your years of service to God and his people.
Much is said these days about the image of the Protestant minister. It is alleged that you young men are general- ly either confused about the ministry you are entering, or else that you resist the image of it that is most current. You are all familiar with the studies of Richard Niebuhr, which realistically describe the pastorate in the American Church. The new emphasis of this study is upon the administrative task that is laid upon the American pastor. Due to the multiplication of program activi- ties even in the smaller churches, the “image” of the pastor has now come to be that of an executive of a social agen- cy. He is expected to make the church “go” and his “success” seems to be measured by various statistics such as new members received, money raised, buildings built, and the number of bus- tling programs conceived and promoted.
It is no wonder to me that many of you are hesitant and unsure of your calling, if that is the way you conceive
of it. But let us rather examine your ministry in theological terms in order that your image of the ministry may be enriched and the task you undertake in the Church seen in a fuller perspective.
It has become commonplace to say that the only ministry in the Church is Christ’s ministry and that all other min- istries are derivative from his. I have never quite fully understood the impli- cations of this remark, which is usually uttered with a profundity that is sup- posed to end all argument. But let us begin our argument with it today.
Christ’s ministry is the ministry in the Church. The ministry of the laity, that is of the whole people of God, in- cluding you and me, is the ministry of witnessing to Jesus Christ to which we were ordained by our baptism. So far so good. The specialized ministry of Word and Sacrament to which you and I have been called in the Church is de- rived from and supportive of both the ministry of Christ and of that of all of the people of God. When we are ordained in and by the Church, our ministry is not new and different. The terms of the call of a minister in our Church (an es- sential part of his ordination) include these significant words : “that you may be free from worldly care and avoca- tions.” The reason a congregation un- dertakes to pay you a salary as pastor is neither to hire you to be something dif-
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ferent from what you were before ordi- nation, nor does it signify any radical change in your ministry from that of the whole people of God. Rather you are freed by the Church for study and serv- ice and from the necessity of earning your livelihood in some “worldly” way.
To understand fully, then, what you are thus called to do and to be, it is necessary to look at Christ’s own min- istry as a model and pattern. In our tradition the ministry of Christ has been usually described as that of prophet, priest and King. Calvin writes in Book II, Chapter XV of The Institutes : “The office enjoined upon Christ by the Father consists of three parts. For he was given to be prophet, King and priest.” And in The Confession of Faith of our Church (VIII, i), one reads, “It pleased God, in his eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, his only begotten Son, to be the Media- tor between God and man ; the prophet, priest, and King. . . .”
If then the office of the minister of Jesus Christ is to be derived from Christ’s own office in and to the Church, let us look at our ministry together to- day in terms of prophet, priest, and King. For as Calvin goes on to say in The Institutes, “It would be of little value to know these names without un- derstanding their purpose and use.”
I
In what sense then are you and I called by the Church to be prophets? Essentially according to Calvin a proph- et is one who sets forth “useful doctrine sufficient for salvation” (cf. Inst. Book II, Ch. XV). This broad definition will prevent us from too restricted an under- standing of the prophetic role of the pastor and preacher. Some think of the
prophet solely in terms of an Amos or a Jeremiah, thundering, “Thus saith the Lord,” to a people unwilling to lis- ten or to heed.
But it is much wiser to think of prophecy more broadly, as Calvin sug- gests, as setting forth the gospel, the good news of God in Christ, “sufficient for salvation.” This will, of course, in- clude “the social gospel,” viz. : the set- ting forth of the word as it applies to the life of the Church and the world in terms that encourage the witness in the world of the people of God. But this is not easy to do, especially for a young man. Each of you by now has achieved some political, economic and social orientation. Some of you are “lib- erals” in all of these. I doubt not that some of you are conservative, not to say reactionary. May I humbly suggest that the congregation to which you are called will be profoundly uninterested in your private views, liberal or con- servative, on disarmament, integration, the profit system, or the United Na- tions. What your congregation has a right to hear from you is the gospel of Jesus Christ set forth in such clear fashion that as you preach, you and they together see the light of salvation in the pilgrim way you walk.
If you think of prophecy in these terms, you will find that you will not be speaking only as a counsellor to fear- ful people, though you need to do that, nor only as a teacher of Christian doc- trine, though you need to do that, nor only as a lone voice warning of God’s judgment upon a faithless people, al- though every faithful preacher will be required from time to time to do that as well.
But salvation is no small thing. To speak God’s word of salvation to any
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1 people will require all of your knowl- : edge and study, your humility and pray- ' er, your continued learning and repeat- ed moments of high courage.
The heart of what I am saying is | that to be a true prophet of Jesus Christ ' and his gospel, the necessity is to un- : dertake to speak on behalf of God to his j people. This is no easy task. Brash 1 young preachers more often get in trou- 1 ble with their brashness than they do with the gospel. The broader and deeper j your study of the gospel, the more hum- | ble you are about your own opinions I and the surer you are about what God has done and is doing for man’s salva- i tion, the surer you are, week by week, ! to have something persuasive and im- portant to say to the people to whom you are called to preach.
The danger of the preacher-prophet is when he begins for any reason to try to please man more than God, or when his righteous conviction is asserted as his own word to the people rather than God’s. To be a prophet is an impossible task. Any minister of Christ who does not echo again and again in his own heart Jeremiah’s protest at God’s choos- ing him to be a prophet has not really begun his ministry. Jeremiah said, you remember, “Oh, Lord God ! behold I do not know how to speak for I am only a youth.” And thirty years from now, if you remain sensitive to your high calling, you will protest in your prayers, “Behold, I do not know how to speak for I am only a youth.”
And as to Jeremiah, God’s answer will be, “Do not say T am only a youth’
. . . and whatever I command you, you will speak. . . . Behold I have put my words in your mouth.”
God’s words of reconciliation, cour- age, love, patience, judgment, and sal-
vation : this is your high prophetic call- ing. No work is harder and no work more thrilling. If you so look at your ministry, you will not be confused, though you will know from the begin- ning that it is more than you, of your own ability and talent, can ever accom- plish. And each Sunday you will pray that your words are God’s words and that the salvation you proclaim is also his.
II
In what sense is a Presbyterian min- ister to be a priest? I am profoundly weary of the 400 year old disputes that continue to divide the Church of Jesus Christ on this matter. Of course, you are not a priest who controls the peo- ple’s access to God. But no Catholic who knows his best tradition believes that either. Let us have done with an- cient controversy and examine this min- istry of ours in terms of Christ’s min- istry from which ours must be derived. Let us be very clear that Christ died upon a cross for our sins and for those of the whole world. This is his once and for all accomplishment. He alone, after the order of Melchizedek, is prophet, priest and King, the sole mediator between God and man. This we accept as having been accomplished. But positively why each week do the people of God gather in the sanctuary? Why are you called upon to lead this people to the throne of grace? In what sense is yours a priestly ministry ? What is the relationship of cult to ethics or of worship?
If one were to put his finger on the chief source of the confusion of the American Protestant minister, it is just here. Most Presbyterian ministers are at a loss really to relate the regular wor-
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ship of Almighty God, its hymns, pray- ers and sacraments, to the scheme of salvation he sets forth in his preaching. This is the central sickness of the American Church today.
The cure to this sickness will not be found in our aping the outward acts of Catholic priests. Liturgical gadgets will not transform a Presbyterian Service into anything more useful. Reverence and worship cannot be produced by anything less than the consciousness of the presence of God himself. But we as Presbyterian ministers do not believe we in any sense control or contrive that presence. As our new Directory for W or- ship puts it, “In worship the initiative lies with God” (II, i). “In public wor- ship God makes known among his peo- ple his love in Jesus Christ, his claim upon their lives, his abiding presence with them, and his concern for all crea- tion. . . .” (Ibid). And our Directory also says, “Those ordained to the min- istry of Word and Sacraments have entrusted to them the direction and leading of public worship” (I, 4).
This “Christian worship is . . . above all ... a corporate response by the Church to God’s mighty act of redemp- tion in Jesus Christ” (II, 2).
If you and I will begin to think of our priestly office in these terms, there can be a resurgence of life and joy in the public worship of our Church. This task of leadership to which you are called is not the preliminary to your ser- mon. The worship of God in which the minister, with reverence, awe and due preparation of mind and spirit, leads a congregation into the very presence of God is in our tradition the only setting for the effectual preaching of the Word.
I am told that many young men, sure of their call to Christ’s ministry, are yet
unsure of their call to serve as pastor of any particular Church. “So much of what the churches do, budgets and Boy Scouts, building programs and dull so- cial gatherings, women’s associations and Sunday School picnics — what has this to do with my ministry?”
Let it be understood that every job in this world has its routine and unin- teresting aspects. If any of you think my task in the Church is all glamor, think again. Hours of committee meet- ings and days and nights of travel, even abroad, soon lose their glamor. But what is more wonderful than week by week to enter a sanctuary, to lead a people who have come there voluntarily to worship God, to pray and sing, to voice praise and thanksgiving, to sit in Christ’s place at his table, to preach the word, and bless the people? If this is your work, cannot many small burdens be carried lightly with it?
The ministry of word and sacrament in the Presbyterian Church is, in our increasingly organized and organiza- tional life, one of the few callings which is centered in creative human and hu- mane service. How can any young man resist a call to such a ministry ? To com- pare it to being a cog in a great busi- ness, or even to prefer academic teach- ing to it, is profoundly to misconceive what the ministry may be in personal challenge and satisfaction, in deep joy and ultimate meaning.
Ill
But what about the minister being a King? You will have noticed that I named my sermon “Prophet and Priest, but not a King.” By this topic I did not intend to imply that I would reject the third part of the traditional understand- ing of Christ’s threefold ministry.
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But I do want to make it clear that the idea that a Presbyterian minister is in any sense a “King” is false and mis- leading. In other days, when the parson was “the person” in a community, when discipline in the Church carried with it civil penalties, when, as in Geneva, Cal- vin sought order in a revolutionary age, there may have been excuse for making the pastorate appear to be at least a pale reflection of our Lord’s rule in his Kingdom.
It is equally true that it is a profound misunderstanding of the present day pastor’s role, if he is understood to be a boss or dictator of any kind, or an executive officer with authority over the people of his congregation.
Jesus said to his disciples, “The Kings of the nations exercise Lordship over them ; and those in authority over them are called Benefactors. But not so with you ; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.”
Surely the ministry of word and sac- rament is a kingly ministry too, if we will in our understanding of it accept Jesus’ radical revolutionary view of Lordship and rule.
I choose this text from Luke rather than the more familiar one in Mat- thew, particularly because I am speak- ing about our ministry to you young men. It is true that your youth, as you begin your ministry, is a handicap in your role of prophet, or of priest. The years add wisdom to the prophet, and make his words more easily accepted ; age and experience, sickness, sorrow, death — all these make a man a better priest. But here our Lord suggests that
contrary to all the world’s conception, a Christian King should be a youth, that is one who, because of junior status, finds it natural to be a servant — a min- ister.
So understood, the Kingly ministry is the willingness to obedience to our Lord to serve a whole congregation of people one by one. That is why, when you are tired you will make that hos- pital call on a lonely invalid. That is why you will give yourself to the poor, the unlovable, the lonely, and the rich. That is why you will ring doorbells and call upon strangers, so that they may be no longer strangers.
We are told that the driving force in American life is status-seeking. I am sure all of us are human and ambitious enough to seek some status. But the status of a Christian minister is always a junior status, “Let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.”
If throughout your ministry you will remember this, in this sense only try- ing to retain your youth, you will find that this is an ambition which can be achieved — there will not be too many seeking your place — you will find that most of the heartache and most of the bitterness that has blighted men’s min- istries will not blight yours and that the end will be as thrilling as the beginning.
May such a ministry be yours. And if it is, it will be crowned by successive generations of young men in increasing numbers and quality who, having seen the reflection of our Lord in you, will also hear his call to serve him in the Church.
CONVENTRY— JUNE 8, 1962
Pain is in everything — in joy, in love, in life,
(and even granite is alive).
Only death is painless though the approach to it sums up all pain.
The tree is lacerated by the woodman’s axe and saw, the wood winces under the driven nail, the asphalt cracks at the dandelion’s upward thrust to light and air, to being-trodden-upon,
its flower mangled by the boot, which, bruising, wears away. Pain everywhere.
To inflict pain, our and Nature’s original sin, to be expiated in appropriate suffering.
Appropriate !
Was not the Carpenter nailed to the Tree?
Pain takes its place
in Coventry
where new proportion
fits old discords into unity,
foretaste and sign of man at one with God
in painless harmony.
Pain takes its place, is reconciled with life where Christ is seen in Glory.
— T. M. Heron, in Frontier (used with permission).
FREEDOM AND TRADITION IN PASTORAL THEOLOGY
Seward Hiltner
The purpose of this discussion is to examine the meaning of free- dom and of tradition in pastoral theol- ogy, to see the relationship that has ex- isted between them, and to ask, in the light of reflective meditation, what that relationship should be. Some prelimi- nary explanation is needed about the nature of pastoral theology.
The Meaning of Pastoral Theology
As the term “pastoral theology” has been used in Protestant circles since the latter part of the eighteenth century, it has had at least three kinds of mean- ings. First, it has referred to the study of the theory and practice of the care of souls, thus being almost a synonym for the term “poimenics.” In this mean- ing, its focus is the theory and practice of the shepherding function of the church, and of the minister as represen- tative of the church.
Second, “pastoral theology” has re- ferred to the whole theory of the work of the minister, including homiletics, poimenics, catechetics, apostolics, and so on. That is, instead of interpreting the shepherding function of the church and the minister as applying to some kinds of activities rather than to others, this second conception of pastoral theol- ogy has assumed that shepherding, as a metaphor, is the central conception around which all the activities of church and pastor are organized, and is the basis of the theory of those functions. During the nineteenth century there was much discussion of these two con-
ceptions of “pastoral theology.” The term “practical theology” came into wider use among those who thought “pastoral theology” should be confined to the theory of only some types of func- tion.
The third conception of “pastoral theology” was not in fact a logical alter- native to either of the first two notions already indicated. But it is mentioned because of its historical significance. Ac- cording to this conception, “pastoral theology” was an omnibus kind of study of the work of the church and the min- ister, which received its content from the biblical, historical and doctrinal studies and then applied this content to the actual work of the pastor. By the turn of our century, this had become the dominant conception. In seminaries of the more liturgical churches, the term “pastoral theology” was retained. In the so-called free churches, it tended to be replaced by “practical theology.” What was lost from the nineteenth cen- tury conceptions was the conviction that there was a theory of the ministry, a theory of the minister’s operations, and a theory of the church’s activity, and that this theory was in some vital sense related to practice. What was gained in the movement from either of the first two ideas to the third was of course some release from particular and restricted forms in which the theory had become embedded.
Until recently, in the “free-church” tradition (especially Baptists), the idea
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of a pastoral theology was, for all prac- tical purposes, a dead issue. Free-church ministers who had their theological edu- cation before 1930 may recall a course on “pastoral theology” as an omnibus and usually dry consideration of how to conduct a wedding, a funeral, a finance campaign, or a tea. They will recall it as “practical” in the sense that no vi- talizing theory was involved in it, but as impractical as far as any specific situ- ations, cases, or down to earth consid- erations were concerned. The vital prac- tical courses that they may recall from those days were about religious educa- tion, which seemed to have cut the um- bilical cord and made a fresh start, or of practical Christian ethics, in which Christian principles were used so as to influence the world.
In my discussion, I want to renounce entirely the third notion of “pastoral theology” as an omnibus consideration of variegated skills unconnected by a fundamental theory on the one side or by concrete study of individual situa- tions on the other side. This tradition, it should be noted, is not dead ; and it lives on precisely in those churches that call themselves “free.” Every year sees many books and articles on such topics as “the work of the minister,” which float in some anecdotal no-man’s-land between concrete instance and basic principle and which manage to avoid entangling alliances with either. Most of the new critical literature on the na- ture of the ministry has appeared since 1953-
But I want very definitely to bring back something of the first two mean- ings of “pastoral theology.” It will be recalled that the first of these is differ- entiated from the second in its limiting of the shepherding focus of the min-
istry to some types of activities rather than extending it to all, as did the sec- ond conception. But what these two no- tions had in common, against the third, | was the conviction that a basic theory was required for the functions and operations. It is this fundamental idea that will be advocated in this paper, whether we define pastoral theology in the narrower sense of shepherding pas- toral care or in the broader sense of the total shepherding focus of all the pastor’s functions.
As between conceptions one and two,
I am strongly inclined to take the first, which sees in pastoral theology the the- ory of pastoral operations in which the shepherding aspect is dominant over other aspects, and which therefore be- comes a comprehensive theory of Chris- tian pastoral care. But one must retain from the second theory the notion that every function of the church or minis- ter has shepherding implications, even though rejecting the imperialistic idea that the shepherding focus is always the most important one. With such a posi- tion, it becomes possible for me to speak of pastoral theology as the theory of shepherding pastoral operations or functions, and thus to be relatively con- crete in what I am focusing on ; while at the same time I am forced to see that the shepherding dimensions of the pas- tor’s functions go beyond his activities in pastoral care. So long as these actu- alities are kept in mind, it becomes a mere terminological problem as to what “pastoral theology” denotes.
Thesis of the Article
All this, to be sure, sounds very ab- stract ; and it would not be put in this way unless I considered it an essential preliminary to my main points about
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freedom and tradition in pastoral the- ology. Let me now give my thesis, stated first in negative, and then in positive, terms. Here is the negative statement of the thesis. The omnibus conception of pastoral theology, which is neither theoretical nor concrete, must be re- nounced in all its forms in relation to pastoral care in particular and to the operations of the pastor and church in general. And here is the positive state- ment. The conception of pastoral theol- ogy as involving a basic theory of the minister’s or church’s operations, but transcending in content all previous pas- toral theologies, must be developed both in the particular shepherding functions and in the general operations of the pas- tor and the church. I shall try to explain and defend these theses, and to suggest that the greatest threat to their realiza- tion lies within the so-called “free” churches.
In their desire to find release from dead aspects of tradition, the so-called “free” churches have buried some corpses that were only apparently dead. What happens then is not merely com- plaint about the small size of the living population, but is also the emergence of a new and uncriticized tradition whose traditional character goes unrecognized because, in content, it is unlike that from which release was sought. Let me be more specific, and cite some parallels.
Preaching
In the field of homiletics, for exam- ple, one of the achievements of the past half century is the Beecher Lectures on preaching at the Yale Divinity School. The most renowned preachers, and teachers of preaching, in each decade are faithfully recorded in their Beecher Lectures. And what does one find? He
finds some who emphasize the basic content of the Christian gospel that the preacher is trying to communicate to his people ; and others who stress the skills, the art, or the techniques of preaching. What he will not find throughout the Beecher series is a basic treatment on homiletics, the basic theory of the oral communication of the Word, dynami- cally linked and related to concrete con- texts in which the function of preach- ing takes place. The hearer or reader of these lecturers and books may well be inspired about new insights into the meaning of the gospel, and may get some excellent technique suggestions on constructing sermons ; but what he will not get is a basic theory about the meaning and function of preaching in relation to concrete contexts in which the activity takes place. He may get in- formation about the gospel, inspiration on its human relevance, and useful tech- niques ; that is, his knowledge, his feel- ing, and his gimmicks may be touched. But his intellect, in the sense of culti- vating a basic theory of homiletics that informs actual situations, and learning from concrete situations what will cor- rect and deepen the basic theory, will not be touched. Since he has never had any homiletics in this sense anyhow, the free-church minister will not know there is anything missing. And if he is taken to task by the more conserva- tive brother, he is likely to be as much repelled by the aridity and formalism of the latter’s homiletical theory as he is by the conception of the message to be preached.
Religious Education
Or consider what, in the large, has happened to the free-churches in the field of religious education. It was in-
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dividuals in these churches, and later the churches themselves, that had the courage to look at John Dewey’s basic idea that learning occurs only as inter- ests are touched, and to begin the con- struction of a theory of religious educa- tion that rejected a pattern of imposition and tried to become what we should now call “existential.” But three things happened within this movement, even though these remarks should not be construed as a denial of genuine prog- ress that we have made in religious edu- cation. First, the Bible and the Chris- tian heritage tended to become source books for illustrations, rather than, in some basic sense, normative for bring- ing us the relevation of God in Christ. Second, the religious educators devoted so much time to expounding those as- pects of their theory that rejected the old patterns of imposition that they failed to become concrete ; and the practical people who had to do the con- crete job, as a result, often made serious distortions of the new movement. Third, a religious education orthodoxy arose which, because it regarded itself as pro- gressive, was unusually dogmatic in its resistance either to old truth that had been overlooked or new truth that was emerging.
Within these past few years, in Chris- tian education as in homiletics, I firmly believe something new is appearing : firm theory related to concrete practice, solid reliance upon revelation along with a critical but appreciative use of social science.
Church Administration
If I appear critical of our betrayal of homiletics and catechetics, my com- ments on church administration will seem devastating. So far has this sub-
ject moved in the direction of gimmicks that it may even be a surprise that it could be thought of as anything else. But consider : The administrative or executive functions of the church or pastor are the cohering functions, what holds things together, what, in a con- crete sense, makes an operating and, we hope, transforming fellowship out of the whole business. Is there anything Chris- tian about the bases upon which the church ought to be held together? Are there ways of achieving fellowship that Christianity must renounce, and other ways that it must cultivate despite risks and obstacles? This is not of course to imply, here or anywhere else, that there are not valuable things to be learned from secular experience of many kinds. But what order of such experience is likely to be relevant ? Do we learn about the financial coherence of the Christian fellowship from the analogy of high- pressure community fund campaigns? Or do we look to the best secular thought and experience on how to make an enterprise cohere, which moves far beyond the gimmick stage? The fact is that our theory of church administra- tion, if such a thing exists at all, is out of touch with the most basic secular experience and thought along these lines.
At the same time there is this notable absence of any Christian or basic the- ory of administration within the church, the institutional complexities of church life have increased many fold ; and the pastor, as executive coherer of this en- terprise, is pushed to the utmost in a degree that even a Richard Baxter could not conceive. If we have no open and basic theory of all this, it does not mean that no theory is in operation. What it means, instead, is that there is
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a sub rosa theory, uncriticized, accept- ing the gimmick aspects of secular ad- ministrative experience without the growing body of principles, and totally unconscious of the fact that Christian administration requires a Christian the- ory if it is to be Christian. I sometimes think that administration within the churches is becoming the last frontier of obscurantism.
Pastoral Care
Or consider my own field of pastoral care, and the narrower definition of pastoral theology as the shepherding function of the ministry that is more in evidence in some types of activity than in others. Here too we are far from blameless, although our recent record seems to be, in some respects, better than that of some others that have been mentioned. At the turn of the cen- tury, the chief element in the theory of pastoral care could be called “assidu- ity.” The exhortations to wear out shoe leather, and later automobile tires, were certainly not irrelevant. But they con- tained the hidden assumption that pas- toral care is not genuinely interesting, that it is principally a duty to be per- formed to earn the right to the inter- esting aspects of the church’s work and ministry. Nor are we free of this yet.
During the 1920’s and since, how- ever, has come a collection of move- ments proclaiming from the bedside and study that there is no more interesting aspect of the ministry than pastoral care. Psychology has come to our aid. By being able to understand something of what our relationship with them can mean, we make contact with the vitali- ties of actual helping relationships as never before. This is new and very posi- tive.
But is pastoral care, then, simply the way the minister applies psychology, strictly coordinate with the way the so- cial worker or psychiatrist might apply psychology? Are the new findings so completely adequate that we can simply continue to borrow a few leaves from the books of the psychoanalyst and his relatives, being careful of course, to say frequently and loudly that we are not psychoanalysts or psychiatrists? Or is our pastoral care function, with all the valuable new insights we now have in connection with it, still to be understood in some basic sense on which psychiatry and its brethren have little light to shed? Do we need to develop a new basic theory of pastoral care that in- cludes the modern insights but that belongs explicitly within the tradition of Christian ministry? Ever since I have been peddling this particular pill, during the past twenty years or so, I have been getting a positive response from the pastors of the more liturgical churches. I am still uncertain as to the response from the ministers of the free churches. In so far as they want to avoid going back to any authoritarian tradition in pastoral care, plainly I am with them. But in so far as they seem fearful of looking back anywhere at anything, then the fact is that their theory of pastoral care is still one of disorganized assiduity covered by drib- lets of unrelated psychological insight. As such, it is not deep or relevant enough for the needs of our day.
Toward a Theory of Functions
Let us try to state what, generally speaking, has happened to these func- tions or operations, and to the study of them. Within the group of churches that are more liturgical, or more con- servative, or more structured in form
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and polity, there was greater initial re- sistance to the inclusion of any insights from modern knowledge into the basic theory of the work of church and min- ister. Experimentation was undertaken more slowly and reluctantly, and in its early phases tended to discount any re- lationship between the experiments and basic theory or structure. But as time has gone on, it is precisely these churches that have become most active in their experimentation, and are in- creasingly convinced that, while this may change some basic theory, it will not alter it in an unchristian direction.
The free churches, on the other hand, went for the new insights much earlier. Feeling confined by the old structures of a formalized but undynamic pastoral theology (or homiletics, or social teach- ing, etc.), they moved toward release from those patterns. Convinced that they were progressive, they proclaimed their own freedom as the tradition en- abling them to slough off the outworn irrelevancies and to seek the new. So long as the new was something never heard of before, they had no conflict in accepting it. But when the new turned out, at times, to be a rediscovery of something previously shuffled off, the situation was different. Most especially does this seem to be true in our redis- covery of the conviction that there must be a basic theory and structure of opera- tions, and not merely an unrelated col- lection of truths or insights or tech- niques. So they pay lip service to a the- ory of the functions of church and min- ister, but do not wrestle with the ma- terial out of which any significant the- ory must emerge. So much impressed with the pit from which they have been digged, they hesitate to enter any mine lest it too prove to be a pit.
To some extent what is said exag- gerates, for there are outstanding ex- ceptions to these trends. And the point is certainly not to drive free churchmen into unfreedom. But if there is fear of any depth because what one has been freed from was an unpleasant depth, then the result is likely to be a dogmatic superficialism.
So far as the functions and operations of the pastor and church are concerned, what the previous generation had to free itself from was an arid and un- dynamic theory and structure that im- peded the discovery of new and vital content. But having freed itself from the old theory, the new and vital content was absorbed only in chunks, as if the digestive process leading to a more basic theory and structure were now un- necessary. So even the originally vital content began to lose its dynamic mean- ing; and discussions could be had on whether, for example, there was too much or too little stress on pastoral counseling or religious education or evangelism. Efforts to rediscover vital- ity in preaching were made either in an inspirational manner, or in purely doc- trinal terms, with no sense that even the vitality of preaching was an im- possibility without a basic homiletic the- ory and structure. And so there arose two tendencies that appear to be far apart, but which are actually two as- pects of the same misunderstanding : on the one side, those who frankly go for the gimmicks, and on the other side, those who believe vitality comes only through content and doctrine and Bible and in no way through the functions themselves. Both views fail to under- f i stand that a theory of operations, firm but not rigid, open but not jelly-like, is essential to vitality of function. If it
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does not cohere, it is likely to be inco- herent ; and if it is not stated, it is likely to have all the unpredictable devilish- ness of a repression.
You will recall that my negative statement of thesis was this : that the omnibus conception of pastoral theology (in whatever sense that be defined) be done away with for good. And the posi- tive statement : that a basic theory of I the operations of the minister and the church, both in particular and in gen- eral, must be created, and must relate to concrete experience. Perhaps at least the meaning of the thesis is now clearer.
How do I learn about pastoral theol- ogy, either in the narrower shepherding sense, or as the general theory of opera- tions of pastor and church? According to my thesis, it is never enough to learn this through gimmicks of any kind or degree, even though the ability to con- struct relevant gimmicks is of great importance. But neither is this to be learned merely by studying Bible, doc- trine, history, or what not, and then ap- plying it to specific situations. In both instances, the energetic and dynamic connection between concrete experience and basic theory is denied ; and the es- sential two-way movement is not culti- vated. Actually, we learn to construct a theory of operations out of disciplined reflection on concrete experience, which reflection in turn is brought to bear on the critical understanding of the con- crete experience, and so on back and forth. The richer the concrete experi- ence, the more basic the theory that is suggested by it. The more basic the theory, the deeper or broader are the capacities to penetrate concrete experi- ence.
Let me see if I can make the issue “existential” for you. Suppose that some
member of your congregation is a gen- uine industrial statesman, and that he comes to you with some such statement as this. “George, in my industry I have found that what I have to pursue to make it work — to work for the work- ers, for the executives, and for the con- sumer of the products — is a basic theory of industrial operations today. What equivalent to this do you have in the church, that is uniquely appropriate to the operations of a church as we think our theory is getting to be for a respon- sible industry?” What would your an- swer be?
Of course I know you would say, and properly, that the church is in some sense a community of those who would be faithful, or those to whom Christ has spoken, and so on. That is, the first an- swer would properly be doctrinal, or biblical, or historical. But suppose our friend pressed you, saying, “Of course I understand that. That’s why you exist at all. That’s your foundation, source, and end. And it’s important. But what does this mean for a daily theory of operations ? What does it say about the meaning of preaching in the whole en- terprise, and how it is conducted ? Have you any theory of that kind? In our enterprise we are developing one, strict- ly because we can’t operate properly without a critical theory of operations.” I wager there would be none of us who would feel adequately prepared to reply to this question. About this ignorance I do not care ; it is understandable. What I would hit hard is any obscurantism that denied any importance to attempts to become unignorant.
The Theology in Pastoral Theology
A final point. Even if you have fol- lowed me up to this point, and agree
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that we need a basic theory of the op- erations of pastor and church emerging out of creative interaction between con- crete experience and reflective symboli- zation of it, you may still wonder why I have resurrected the notion of “pas- toral theology’’ to denote at least one aspect of this. Where is the theology, you may be asking?
My final contention is that, in so far as we follow this kind of concern and procedure, we are moving toward the constructing or discovery of theology as knowledge of God in as basic a sense as is done by the systematic theologian. We are doing, for some aspects of ex- perience, what he attempts to do for all aspects of our experience. If this dimension is not explicitly recognized in our operations, then we are mere- ly speakers, counselors, salesmen, or group leaders who happen to operate in a certain kind of sociological or ideo- logical setting.
I have nothing against good speak- ing, salesmanship, counseling or group leadership. But if there is not a reflec- tive theory of these things explicitly theological in character, what tends to happen? There may be little or no ac- quaintance with the depths inherent, for example, in many pastoral relationships ; only the surface may be seen. This is, with any good man, not likely to last long; for the depths force themselves upon him. But what then? Suppose him to be involved in some deeply meaning- ful experience, such as with a person who fights off death or bitter despair. The pastor is deeply moved. But he may then generalize from this in a way that enables him to be related to the next person only sentimentally, as if every crisis of every person were to be evalu- ated by the terms learned in dealing
with the first. If he has no general the- ory of operations, theologically oriented at both ends, he is unlikely to have ade- quate standards, and may fall at times into sentimentalism, superficiality or hard-boiledness.
None of these dire results is neces- sary. But if they are to become unneces- sary, then there must be a wrestling with operations at the level of theologi- cal theory. Let me, in closing, illustrate with a brief reference to funerals. One of our advanced students who studied funerals reached the conclusion, among others, that most of the reforms recent- ly agitated among ministers in relation to funerals were based on the aesthetic sensitivities of the ministers, which might or might not be related to the needs of the people or the understand- ing of the gospel. We may indeed be critical of those undertakers who inter- pret meeting the needs of the people in pandering terms, or who at times make a travesty of the gospel. But are not our own aesthetic sensibilities inadequate criteria for examining the whole busi- ness? What, specifically, is our basic theory of a Christian funeral as an op- eration or function of the Christian church ? How clear are we about it ?
Elsewhere in the world, Christians are likely to refer to us as too practical or activistic in America. Yet what my thesis implies is that we have failed to push genuine practicality to the point where it makes a contribution to basic theory, even theological theory. So the practicality we actually possess must be a deficient kind, a sort of pseudo-prac- ticality, a practicality of the gimmick. This is not alone to be cured, as I see it, by a more profound penetration of doctrine, of the Bible, or of Christian history, important as those things are.
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' We need also to reach for a basically theological theory within our operations themselves, so that the operations il- luminate our theological understanding and our theological understanding actu-
ally shapes our operations. To move in this direction will be to state a Christian pastoral theology for our day that is worthy to stand beside the Christian constructive theology that is emerging.
Modern biblical theology has rightly made it its concern that biblical terminology should be seen ‘within the context of’ biblical thought as a whole. But it is a misuse of this prin- ciple to apply it to words, in such a way that the relating of the word to features of the general context of biblical thought replaces the examination of its actual syntactical con- text. The general theological context can never in the slightest degree be a substitute for the syntactical environment. Only within their syntactical environment do words function. Where this is neglected, we may produce studies which quote Greek and Hebrew words in every sentence and which clamorously insist on the pursuit of biblical terminology, but which in fact are not dealing with biblical language at all.
— ’James Barr, in Biblical Words for Time, Allenson, 1962, p. 154.
RENEWAL THROUGH WITNESS
George W. Webber
Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him cruci- fied.” Our concern is with the content of this affirmation, for it also defines the meaning of witness for the congre- gation today. When Paul seems to limit the arena of his concern to “nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified,” he is in fact setting up a kind of um- brella under which he had the right to talk about all of life for the meaning of every part of it is to Christ. Paul in- tended to witness to Christ; that was his business and nothing more; but it was not a narrow or confining task.
The task of the congregation is wit- ness also in this sense. All that it does and says must point to Christ, to his life and death and resurrection. As D. T. Niles has suggested somewhere, the Christian is not an objective witness who stands apart from the event to which he testifies, like a man watching a traffic accident. He is himself involved as an active participant in the event. He becomes part of the gospel, for Christ has taken hold of him to make him a witness. He must himself share in the life and death and resurrection of his lord.
The Dimensions of Witness
Instead of using the familiar three dimensions of evangelism ( diakonia , koinonia, kerygma ) as a way of describ- ing the various aspects of witness, let us examine the task of the congregation in the light of the Christ’s life. Thus our
section headings become incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.
i. Witness to the Incarnation: The Incarnation was a life lived not in the circumscribed confines of a religious or- ganization, but in the midst of the world. Christ came into the world, not the Church, and for the sake of the world. The Church in our time has lost the truth of the Incarnation and has re- treated into the privatized circle of lei- sure time and family, making religion into one of the twenty-two sections of Time Magazine and generally unrelated to most vital areas of human life. The tension between Christ and culture is not a problem, sure sign that the church is not alive in the midst of the world.
To live by the Incarnation is to par- ticipate fully as a human being in the midst of the world. The phrase “Holy Worldliness” points to the proper em- phasis for our time, cutting across the distinction between sacred and secular, and bringing faith again into the mar- ket place.
There are many concrete aspects of such genuine participation. The first is described by the work presence, truly present in the world seen as one lives in obedience to the king of heaven. For clergy, it is hard to be present in the world as open, responsive human be- ings. We almost certainly hide behind our ecclesiastical role. When the East Harlem Protestant Parish was begin- ning, we were terribly concerned about how to communicate the Gospel to the people in East Harlem. With all the barriers of class and culture and lan-
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guage, how could we somehow figure out a way to get through to these peo- ple? So we hired a very sensitive per- son to come and live in the community and study this problem — how could we, white, middle-class Seminary-trained clergy, communicate to the people of East Harlem ? How could we, in effect, learn enough about them so we could get the message across? After a couple months she came and said, “Forget it, you got the problem all wrong. There’s no hope as long as you’re going to be ministers, all seeing, all knowing, om- niscient, standing on the bank of East Harlem watching this floodtide of hu- manity sweeping by, determined to do good at any cost. Until you get in and are part of that world, if it’s possible for you to become part of that world (she wasn’t convinced it was), and live by the Incarnation, then you won’t have a problem of communication.” And I think she was right. The starting point was not some kind of determination to help people, but the willingness to live in the middle of their world and share in as many of its dimensions as possible. The Christian does not stand safely in the shelter of the Church and throw life rings out to drowning men, but is one who jumps into the torrents of life and with his arm around the drowning man points to the place where they both find their salvation. There is no other way but participation, to live by the In- carnation which means to be truly pres- ent in the world where God is at work in Jesus Christ.
Integral with presence is the ability to listen to the world. The Church has got to stop approaching the world as though it had pre-packaged answers for all the world’s problems, and in- stead, learn with humility to listen to its
travail, and in the light of what it hears, seek with new urgency to discover God’s word and will for that specific context. But this experience of listening is so uncommon, not least of all for clergy, that it is hard to describe. For me, the best glimpse into the meaning of genuine listening came through John Genzel, a Lutheran pastor in New York City, who has been assigned half time as a minister to jazz musicians. Al- though his work sounded a little off- beat and esoteric, I was curious to find out more about it. His witness is an illuminating experience for those who seek to take the Incarnation seriously, for Pastor Genzel has learned to be present in the world, to listen, and feel and respond. Based in a parish, he spends most nights in the jazz centers of the city, not preaching or talking religion necessarily, but entering into the lives of jazz musicians and learning to know them as fellow human beings, often sensitive and alive. From them he has come to understand freshly and more deeply the meaning of depersonali- zation in modern life, about the struggle of racial minorities, about alienation and estrangement and the other big words clergy too easily bandy about. They showed him what is really happening in the hearts and minds and lives of people in a big city in the middle of the twentieth century. In listening and learning from the world, he was driven back to the Bible with new urgency.
To live by the Incarnation, then, is not to begin with a ready made answer for the world’s problems, but so to live in the world that a genuine dialogue takes place between the realities of the world and the truth of the gospel. God’s word comes afresh to men as they stand in concrete situations in the world,
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placed there for obedience, and not in the isolation of a religious ghetto. Chris- tian ethics is not a system to be applied like a band-aid to the world’s problems, but is the involvement of Christians in the world’s problems, in the midst of which they express Christ’s love and witness to the hope that comes from the resurrection. To live by the Incarnation is to believe that God is now at work in the world and we are called to dis- cern what he is about, to see the world through eyes of faith, and bring into its life the perspective of the gospel.
Illustrations of dialogue with the world are difficult to find, for as Peter Berger has suggested, there is no con- frontation between a secularized church and a pseudo-Christian culture. Dia- logue demands that Christian laymen be present self-consciously in the world where they work, engage in politics, and struggle for community. Some of the critics have about come to the con- clusion that present forms of congrega- tional life are impossible for the task of Incarnation and radical new forms must be sought. Clearly, every kind of ex- periment that offers hope must be at- tempted, but in the process, the local congregation must also face this issue of participation in the world and not go down without a fight. The congrega- tion of Christ Church, Presbyterian, in Burlington, Vermont, has made serious attempts to be present in the world and enter into dialogue through The Loft, a coffee-house book store, located in the heart of the business district. Where- ever the congregation breaks out of the narrow sphere of “religious” concerns and enters into the full arena of human experience, then dialogue may begin, with all the concomitant results that oc- cur when men come face to face with
the gospel at the heart of life, and not on its periphery.
2. Witness to the Crucifixion: In the second place, the path of witness is to enter into the way of the Cross. We must not only be present in the world, but we are also called to enter into God’s work. Let me mention here the aspects of this task which seem most urgent for our witness today.
(a) We join Christ at work in the world. Most missionary and evangelis- tic literature assumes that the Christian is called to take Christ to the world, to introduce him as some kind of stranger. In fact, Christ is at work in the world and we simply enter into his task as obedient servants. This is to take up our cross and follow him. We are sent to men in whom Christ’s spirit is already at work, and in whom we literally meet Christ. Surely, if we wish to encounter Christ we will find him where he promised to be, with the sick, the prisoners, the hungry, the naked, . . . and with the dehumanized men and women of urban America (Matthew 25:31-46).
It is hard to have such eyes of faith. Many are able to talk about the fight for justice and to work hard for im- portant causes. Few are blessed with the gift of love that enables them to stand with the unlovely victims of in- justice and individually care for them. It is easier to fight for better care of addicts than to love an addict, for when he is not using drugs, he is likely to be unpleasant and unlovable a human be- ing as one can imagine. But Christ, in calling us into his ministry, expects us to see in every man one for whom he also died, and grants to his servants the gift of love.
(b) We are called to meet human
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need, but not promiscuously. Jesus, in the temple, read the passage which de- fined his ministry :
‘‘He has sent me to preach good news to the poor,
proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are op- pressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
As a congregation, we must ask our- selves what it is we are called to do to fulfill this ministry of healing and serv- ice. Set down in the midst of East Har- lem, with its manifold forms of human need, what was a small parish called to do? So easily its energy might be dis- sipated and its function destroyed in the genuine effort to meet more problems than it had the strength or resources to deal with. What is the business of God’s people as a corporate body? Out of the experience of East Harlem I would sug- gest that at least the following elements are part of the answer :
(i) The congregation would under- take those tasks which enable it to point to the reconciliation and the love which it knows in Jesus Christ, in other words to those tasks which point to Jesus Christ. In specific terms this means that a congregation seeks out the problems of human life that are presently no- body’s concern : the unvisited in prisons, the sick no one is caring for, the drug addict, ignored by society or at best treated as a criminal. In East Harlem, the need of the drug addict pointed to a clear place for the congregation to work, for in seeking to offer Christ’s love and healing, in whatever partial and broken ways, it was pointed to the restoring, saving power of God.
As a corollary of this position, when the world discovers addiction as a prob- lem and begins to face the problem, it is not for the church to insist that it de- velop further its programs of medical, legal, psychiatric and casework help, but gladly relinquish much of its work to society. Now, by its work with addicts, it no longer points in a unique way to Christ, for the victims of injustice have been discovered and are no longer help- less.
(ii) The congregation must meet real needs, not simply those that are most obvious. In East Harlem, the im- mediate human needs are so great and overwhelming, the temptation is always to concentrate on food, shelter, employ- ment and the like, without remembering the ultimate needs of men go beyond these. The story of the beggar, asking Peter for alms, is a good reminder of our need to give what we have. Peter recognized the man’s deepest need, and that he could meet only in the name of Jesus Christ. Again, in the story from the gospels of the paralytic man, Jesus met not only the immediate need for healing but also forgave the man his sins. These aspects of human life are not in conflict, but the congregation must never forget that the ultimate need of men is for forgiveness, reconciliation, and community. The congregation, in facing human needs, is thus called not only to bring compassion that encom- passes the life of those in need, but also comprehends the full dimensions of their need.
(iii) The congregation points to Christ, not to itself. “For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your serv- ants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:5). So easily the Christian points to his own
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experience rather than to his lord. Or the clergyman becomes the center for people of their loyalty. But in the re- markable phrase of D. T. Niles, “The Christian is one beggar telling another beggar where to find food.” Lose for a moment that stance of a beggar and stand over the other in some other re- lationship, then we shall fail to follow the way of the Cross and live by Christ alone. The moment we stop being beg- gars in attitude and feeling we begin to live by works and not by faith.
(c) The individual Christian is always involved in witness. The congregation must make decisions as to its areas of work and concern in witness of Christ. For the individual, called to the way of the Cross, everything he does, every- where he goes must be part of his wit- ness. This is pretty idealistic talk, as we all know, for the laity of the Church de- fines Christian service by what they do in and for the gathered life of the Church. But what sounds idealistic is in fact normative. If Christians do not live in their dispersed life in the world as witnesses, the Church is simply not a church. “The church exists by mis- sion as a fire exists by burning,” to use Dr. Brunner’s words. Without laymen engaged in full time obedience, there is no mission.
The new interest in small groups of various kinds in the congregation are in large part a reflection of the need to prepare men in the gathered life of the church for their work in the world. While the locus of much of their witness will be in their daily work, there must also be conscious involvement in com- munity organizations and politics. In East Harlem, as a symbol of church work as obedience in the world, we have long required all staff and mem-
bers to join at least one community or- ganization, working for brotherhood or justice. God is at work in such places, and we must join him there.
(d) The congregation in its service has no ulterior motive. Christ healed men because they were sick. He did not suggest that they should then become his followers. For the Church, this poses a very subtle issue. So much of what we do as one eye on getting new members or building up our institution. This is always wrong as any part of the motivation of our service. But at the same time, we pray that men will come to know the truth and that truth is fully known through life in the body of Christ. Somehow we must both pray that Christ will give the harvest, that men will be lead into his Church, and yet in no way ourselves seek to force the growth or reap the harvest prema- turely.
(e) Finally, in entering into the way of the Cross, the Christian expects suf- fering. The reality of the Crucifixion stands as the power of man’s rejection of love. The congregation today must grasp the truth that when men confront the gospel, they may reject it or try vi- ciously to destroy it. Or, in our day, they may simply disbelieve that it is true, since signs of the first fruits of the king- dom are so rare in the Church. When the Christian expects suffering, antago- nism, dislike, frustration, suspicion, then he is prepared for the warfare against the principalities and powers to which he is called, and surprised by the joy which God often gives in the midst of trouble.
Perhaps unbelief in the claims of Christianity is the sharpest rejection in the inner city. As a white, middle class clergyman in East Harlem, I affirm that
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I am a brother in Christ to the men and women of the community. One is a Puerto Rican orderly in a large hospi- tal, his life dominated by white doctors and nurses who in most cases hardly are aware of him as a person. He is not likely to accept my statement of our brotherhood at face value, but uncon- sciously, perhaps, will subject me to every kind of testing, figuring that sooner or later he will call the white man’s blufif. The testing is a very dis- concerting business, for I, at least, am aware of the feebleness of my love and concern and conscious of my own sin- fulness. So it is hard to know whether I am being “persecuted” for righteous- ness’ sake or for my sins ! In either case, I must learn to expect that the way of the Cross will involve testing and seek in it whatever meaning God will grant.
Thus the way of the Cross is fool- ishness to the world, but for the Chris- tians, the power of God.
3. Witness to the Resurrection : The Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection are part of the one reality of Jesus Christ to which the Christian is called to witness. As we enter into Christ’s work now in the world, we live by hope. Our hope is defined first by the reality of the victory that has been won and second by our confidence that Christ will come again. Service that is not sustained by hope, that does not point to Christ’s victory, is not Chris- tian service at all. Christians share in the first fruits of the kingdom. Eschatol- ogy, then, does not cut across social concern, but is essential to it, if it is to be part of Christian witness.
The unreality of this affirmation for ! most American Christians is obvious.
! In the midst of East Harlem, I am only dimly beginning to glimpse what it must
mean for the congregation. But clearly, there is no other way to continue in the face of failure, discouragement, and frustration save in the confidence that the victory, in spite of our feeble efforts is secure, and that Christ is Lord in- deed.
The reality of the Resurrection must begin to find expression in simply pat- terns in the lives of Christians. To live with joy and confidence in the midst of struggle and seeming defeat— that would point to the Resurrection. To keep on ministering as best one can to drug addicts, even when no names are added to the Church rolls and only a handful are in any sense healed — that is possible only in the confidence that Christ has called you to that task, and whether you succeed or fail, the issue is in his hands.
In East Harlem we have found that positive content can come through “gos- siping the gospel.” If the Resurrection as the central event of faith is at all real to men and women, then natural- ly, spontaneously, they will talk about Christ. This will not be a fundamen- talists intrusion into the lives of oth- ers, but the reality of Christ will be such a part of their own lives that they will, whenever an occasion offers, easi- ly and unselfconsciously “gossip” about what has happened to which they have now become witnesses. A faith that does not gossip the Gospel must be pretty second-hand and unimportant to the one who affirms it. This is not only a matter of talking, of course, but of the orientation of the Christian’s whole life. He is one who understands that all he does is in obedience to his lord, and thus part of witness and service.
Thus in this first section of the dis- cussion of witness we have sought to
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affirm the essential unity between the dimensions of witness : participation in the Incarnation, in the Crucifixion and in the Resurrection. Whenever the Church takes one of these as its basic focus and ignores or curtails the oth- ers, its witness is partial and perhaps becomes even false. For then the con- gregation does not point fully to Jesus Christ, the Lord of its life. Witness is not some form of religious propaganda, nor is it the propagation or establish- ment of churches. It is devoid of any kind of striving for demonstrable suc- cess. Witness is so to live and work and speak among men that you know noth- ing among men except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
The Possibility of Renewal
The topic is renewal through witness. Renewal is a possibility when the Church has been opened to the renew- ing power of the Holy Spirit. It is my thesis that whenever a congregation takes seriously the dimensions of wit- ness we have described in the first part of this talk, it will be driven to repent- ance and may again become the kind of open vessel into which the Holy Spir- it may pour its power. The chastening experience of the East Harlem Protes- tant Parish is illustrative. When the Parish got started, its dynamic founder, Don Benedict, was certain that the Gos- pel was relevant to human needs and that the Christian had to fight for jus- tice. He went into East Harlem, all fists flying, to solve all problems and to witness in every way possible. The speeches made by parish clergy in the early years were all about social con- cern and action. But gradually the par- ish, as it sought to serve its Lord in the world, was driven back to ask what it
means to be witnesses. Then, at last, the congregation as the basis of mission became apparent. Then the great Refor- mation concern with the Church became urgent and renewal a necessity.
1. Renewal through the Word: As the congregations in East Harlem sought to live in their world, to take seriously the Incarnation, they quickly discovered how little they knew about what God had done, was doing, and had promised to do in a short time, they were sent back to Bible study as a basic task of Christians. The Bible, as far as the clergy were concerned, could no longer be a source from which to dredge sermons or a devotional book, but now was the place one turned to understand East Harlem in the confidence that God “has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will” (Ephesians 1:9). The congregation be- comes the locus of a dialogue between the world in which it is seeking to live by the Incarnation and the Word of God in which God speaks with fresh power to his people. In our parish, Wednesday night Bible study has be- come almost as much a part of the pat- tern of congregational participation as Sunday morning worship, though this has come only after a long struggle. One of the clergy of the parish, after six years in East Harlem, used a sabbatical leave of five months to study Greek as a vital preparation for his continuing ministry in the inner city. A congrega- tion engaged in witness will be led to drench itself in scripture so that God’s Word may become a living sword in its hand. Whenever men turn with eager- ness and expectancy to scripture, there is hope of renewal.
2. Renewal through the Sacraments : When a congregation seeks to take the
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way of the Cross as its pattern of obedi- ence, it finds itself driven to a new seriousness in Baptism and especially in Holy Communion. In East Harlem, the parish early discovered that its ministry of service was getting nowhere, for the Christian community is an essential foundation. Only as the parish became truly a family of God, in its own life demonstrating reconciliation, accept- ance, and love, would its service be faithful and point to its Lord. Above all, when men seek to serve Christ, they are led back regularly to the place where he promises to meet them, at his table. There they are fed, sustained and renewed for the sake of their witness. In East Harlem, as we have struggled to hear the Word again, so also we have sought to discover what it means to be a family of God’s people who gather regularly at his table to re-enact the meaning of our faith and to meet our Lord. In our situation we have tried in the actions of communion itself to make clear that we are a family : we gather around the table in large circles, use the ordinary bread of the community, pass the elements from hand to hand, eat and drink together. Whenever men turn with eagerness and expectancy to the table, there is hope of renewal.
3. Renewal through Discipline : When men and women seek to witness to the Resurrection, they discover their urgent need for a new style of life, for the disciplines and habits that reflect their participation in the Kingdom of their Lord that already has begun. Word and Sacrament are essential, but so also is discipline in the new life which we enter at our Baptism. Geddes MacGre- gor in his excellent book on the Church makes the point that for the Scottish church, these three were always kept
together in your tradition. In East Har- lem, the clergy have struggled with a common discipline of life. The parish as a whole is seeking to discover a style that reflects its obedience to a new Lord and its involvement in a new task. Dur- ing Lent each year this is the focus of Bible study, but it is a continual con- cern. As men and women are taught patterns of life that are necessary for the Christian — prayer, Bible study, wor- ship, service and the rest — they become open to the channels of grace. Disci- pline can easily become legalistic and rigid, but these dangers must be run, not because discipline guarantees re- newal, but because the habits of the Christian life help keep men open to the possibility of renewal.
In no way am I seeking in this sec- tion to affirm that renewal has taken place in East Harlem, but only to affirm that as a Parish we set out to witness in every possible way, through Incarna- tion, Crucifixion and Resurrection, and in the process have been driven back to the Bible, to the table, and to a new concern for the habits of the Christian life. Only in this direction does the hope of renewal lie.
Implications for Present Patterns of Witness
The content of this talk has certain implications for the present meaning of witness in the life of the congregations in this country. I have purposely left this negative section until last, for I hope that you will be willing yourselves to draw the necessary conclusions. Let me simply point the way as I see it. My criticism is directed to the practices that we have come to take for granted, continue to carry on year after year, when they have no basis in our theol-
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ogy and may in fact contradict it. Re- cently I have been reading evangelism materials from various denominations. Some of the best of them have devel- oped excellent theological statements on the meaning of evangelism, but usually the methods section that follows has no relationship to the theology at all.
1. The congregation must demon- strate the Gospel : Here men must ex- perience a foretaste of the Kingdom of God, discover the unity that can in fact unite all sorts of conditions of men, albeit in partial and broken ways, and know the joy of life together. At this point, we are all vulnerable. The de- scription of a normative Christian com- munity sounds idealistic and impossible, far removed from the homogeneous, secularized congregations we know. When I heard D. T. Niles suggest that when a stranger enters a church on Sunday, he should encounter a reality of faith that he will recognize. The Church must be the Church, a foretaste of the Kingdom, a living cell in the Body of Christ. Without a per- vasive awareness of its dependence upon its Lord and continual relationship to him, the witness of the congregation is dead.
2. The importance of conversion : We witness that men might believe. In Acts, the process of conversion is defined in what may be a normative se- quence. Upon hearing Peter preach, the listeners were cut to the heart, repented, were baptized for the forgiveness of their sins, and were given the gift of the Holy Spirit. When I joined the Church, twenty junior high children were lined up, all agreed to “live a Christ-like life” and joined the Church. A long time ago, H. Richard Niebuhr wrote :
“As the kingdom of Christ is institu- tionalized in church and state the ways of entering it are also defined, mapped, motorized and equipped with guard rails. Regeneration, the dying to the self and the rising to new life — now ap- parently sudden, now so slow and pain- ful, so confused, so real, so mixed— becomes conversion which takes place on Sunday morning during the singing of the last hymn or twice a year when the revival preacher comes to town.”
In whatever way you would define genuine conversion and commitment to Christ, you must take the matter with utter seriousness and not permit church membership in our day to be superficial and innocuous. Perhaps the story of the encounter between Jesus and the rich young ruler needs to be deeply pon- dered.
3. Christ Converts: In our task of witnessing, it is almost impossible not to be falsely concerned with the results. In a variety of subtle ways we short-circuit the initiative of God and lead men to respond to human agencies and not to Christ. The danger is all the great in an age of institutions where the Church seeks in its own life to copy the patterns of a successful human institu- tion. Congregations want to succeed and in the process lose sight of the function of the Church and betray the task of evangelism. Every time you hear a phrase like “Win souls for Christ,” I hope you will stop and examine the process that is being used. Does Christ do the winning, or the cleverness and wisdom of men? Indeed 95 per cent of the time we hear the phrase, it does re- veal upon examination some form of human manipulation that compromises in the end, true conversion. As a mat-
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ter of fact, I don’t believe the phrase “winning souls” appears in the Bible.
In the inner city we tend to talk about “winning the city for Christ.” Again, the danger is the same. Men pre- sume to achieve what Christ has done and is doing. The moment we feel that the result depends upon us, we have slipped into an unbiblical mode of think- ing. We enter into Christ’s task. He has the initiative. We must witness, what- ever the results, whatever the soil where he places us. But we dare not force the growth, nor harvest before Christ brings it to maturity. Deeply praying that men may respond to Christ, that through our witness they may become part of his body, we yet dare not this concern the motive for our obedience, nor let it absorb our attention.
4. The congregation exists to wit- ness : As we hold before ourselves the essential function of the Church, we have a standard by which to judge the program and activities in which we en- gage. As Barth has said, “As an apos- tolic church the Church can never in any respect be an end in itself ; but, fol- lowing the existence of the apostles, it exists only as it exercises the ministry of a witness.” The danger arises when we invite men to join an organization that exists to serve them, to meet
their spiritual needs, to teach their chil- dren religious values and all the other reasons listed in visitation evangelism manuals. When we get men into Church under false pretenses (new church de- velopment books are full of such), we are not likely to succeed in enlisting them in the true work of Christ.
Enough has been said by Winter, Berger, Marty and the other “ok” crit- ics about the introversion and institu- tional egocentrism of American congre- gations. To break out of our present predicament will be impossible save by the miracle of God’s renewing power. But we may begin by holding firmly be- fore ourselves the truth about our pur- pose. As Jesus instructed the first apos- tles, so we are to go forth and make dis- ciples of all nations. These are not “church members,” but fellow disciples, men and women who enter the life of the congregation not because it is good for them, or will help them, or is right, or is important to their spiritual life, but that they might serve their lord as witnesses to his life and death and re- surrection. In this sense, witness, the kind of witness we have been talking about does not lead to renewal of the Church. It is the Church, truly alive as God’s people in the world.
TILLICH’S SCIENCE OF BEING
William Hallock Johnson
Two generations ago, William E.
Gladstone, British statesman and Prime Minister, in the Nineteenth Cen- tury (1888), reviewed a famous novel by Mrs. Humphrey Ward entitled Rob- ert Elsmer. Mrs. Ward for conscien- tious reasons had abandoned her tradi- tional faith in the Trinity and in the Divinity of Christ and had traced a similar change of belief in the hero of her novel. She and her spokesman seemed happier in a fervent belief in a bare monotheism expressed in lives of devotion to the Christian virtues and in notable service among the people.
Gladstone’s review was reprinted in Later Gleanings ( Scribner’s, New York, 1897), and its closing sentence read : “If the ancient and continuous creed of Christendom has slipped away from its place in Mrs. Ward’s brilliant and sub- tle understanding, it has nevertheless by no means lost a true, if unacknowl- edged, hold upon the inner sanctuary of her heart.”
For some time past theological in- terest has centered in the work of two “offbeat” theologians who have wan- dered from the path of traditional or- thodoxy. They are Rudolf Bultmann of Germany and Paul Tillich of America. Both have a divided allegiance to the new philosophy of existentialism on the one hand and to the teaching of the Old and New Testaments on the other. Our topic is the ontology of Tillich, with only a brief glance at Bultmann. Our main sources are his two volumes on Systematic Theology, Vol. I, 1951, and Vol. II, 1957; also Biblical Re-
ligion and the Search for Ultimate Reality, 1955 (University of Chicago Press) . Two volumes of sermons should also be consulted : The Shaking of the Foundations, 1948, and The New Be- ing, 1955 (both by Scribner’s, New York). It will be convenient to con- fine ourselves to a few leading topics without going into the details of Til- lich’s wide ranging discussion.
Tillich and Creation
Tillich fully recognizes the value of the Biblical and traditional doctrine of Creation. In what he says about crea- tion we hear the voice of traditional or- thodoxy strongly expressed. He says that according to every word of the Bible, “God reveals himself as personal” {Biblical Religion, etc., p. 22. All quota- tions in this section are taken from this book). The doctrines of Christ, of salva- tion and fulfilment depend on this doc- trine. It emphasizes the dependence of all creation on God and the essential goodness of creation. It protects against the two gods, good and evil of dualism, and the idealistic merging of God and man into monism. “It emphasizes the infinite distance between the creator and the creature” (p. 36). It was correct and proper “for Jews and Christians to speak of creation out of nothing. Crea- tion through the word means the per- sonality of God” (pp. 35, 36). Biblical religion in the Old and New Testaments is a religion of personalities. The climax of the argument for the personality of God as the ultimate reality is in the doc- trine of Incarnation. The full and final
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revelation of God : “God is so personal that we can see what he is only in a per- sonal life” (p. 38). It leaves God in his majesty, his power, in his sharp and clear-cut difference from all his crea- tures. This sharp difference protects monotheism from polytheism and pan- theism. It emphasizes the dependence on God of everything created and, con- sequently, the essential goodness of crea- tion (p. 35). Of this doctrine he says, “Without it, Christianity would have ceased to exist as an independent move- ment” (p. 35).
Tillich’s praise of the Biblical ontol- ogy of Genesis could not be stronger or more admirably expressed, and it seems, to quote Dr. Patton, [to be] “shot from the tense bow-string of con- viction.” We are astonished, then, to hear a new and authoritative voice from the stage, the voice of Philosophy. It is so directly opposed to the eloquent plea for the Biblical ontology that wonder : Can it be by the same man? The new voice of an impersonal ontology breaks in without ceremony and says of ontol- ogy: “It speaks of being — itself as the ground of everything that is, personal and impersonal. It speaks of the identity of the infinite with the finite. It speaks of the finite mind through which the Absolute Mind wills and recognizes himself” (p. 36). The two ontologies, Biblical and philosophical, run parallel but never meet. But it will be Tillich’s declared task to show their “profound interdependence” (p. 42).
It is unfortunate, the critic could re- mark, that the “Absolute Mind” when it planned and carried out the stupen- dous enterprise of Creation, was de- prived of the advice and consent of a senate of finite spirits because no finite spirits yet existed.
Under this new system, Tillich ac- knowledges, the way is open for the du- alism and monism from which the Bib- lical ontology gave protection. Two morals may now be safely drawn : first, that with his bitter hostility to the su- pernatural he can admit no real doc- trine of Creation ; and second, that there are two Tillichs, two souls within a sin- gle breast, or one and the same great scholar suffering from a type of schizo- phrenia in the broadest sense, attached with almost equal fervor and equal con- scientiousness to two incompatible and mutually exclusive ontologies, one lead- ing to an abstract and impersonal and speechless and loveless Being, and the other who created the world by his word and out of nothing in the effort- lessness of his omnipotence.
The early Greek thinkers and the philosophers from Plato and Aristotle down have been seeking for Ultimate Reality. As philosophers they cannot and will not appeal to revelation, al- though Plato in the Phaedo reports that Socrates advises Simmias and Cebes to take the best of human opinions and thus sail, not without risk, over the sea of life, unless we have some divine word. People in university circles have all known devout philosophers and scien- tists but have never heard them sing, in passionate praise to Being itself. Why should they? First, because Being is an abstraction from the innumerable be- ings in the world and is itself on the side of the finite and cannot reach the ultimate, and the philosophers who do their best work in moments of detach- ment and reflection regard passions and emotion as obstacles to clarity of thought. What can Tillich do in the circumstances? Fortunately he has dis- covered a short cut to Ultimate Reality,
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and uses it constantly and skillfully in his argument. An ultimate concern in the key to Ultimate Reality. There is no doubt of its utility as pointing to the truth but much as to its infallibility. The concern must be passionate and uncon- ditional, a matter of life and death. It must grasp us or be grasped by us with our whole being, not by reason alone. Tillich thinks that there may be such concern for being-itself as the psalmist had when he exclaimed, “My soul is athirst for God, for the living God” (Ps. 42:2). I believe it is plain that if God is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, that being-itself, abstract- ed by the human mind from finite things, must fall on the finite side and further is so uncertain in meaning and closely allied, as we shall see, with Nothingness that it cannot be a matter of life and death. Ultimate Concern is too enig- matic, too subjective, too changeable from group to group and from one pe- riod in an individual life to another to reach as high as heaven or as deep as the Everlasting Arms.
Examples easily suggest themselves. Thus C. S. Lewis, in his book, Mir- acles, 1947, says that he was at first an atheist with a “passionate convic- tion” that miracles never happened, but then he became a Christian with an equally passionate conviction that the Gospel miracles are historical. Similar- ly Reinhold Niebuhr in his Beyond Tragedy, 1937 (pp. 289, 290), speaks of his radical change of view on the Resurrection since twenty years ago. Muslims have as much concern for their creed as Christians, and many observers say that the Communists have more. Tillich’s radical change in the matter of the Fall (see next section) may be a
case in point. It is possible that Tillich’s short cut to Ultimate Reality may be like the by-way into which the Pil- grim was led and which ended up with Doubting Castle and Giant Despair.
Tillich and the Fall
In the philosophical situation today what stands out with most startling em- phasis is the fact that the new school of Existentialism has given powerful support to the Biblical doctrine of the Fall. Existentialism, as Tillich has right- ly said, is a description of the human predicament. The result is that the writ- ings of the living existentialists with- out exception are dotted with such terms as estrangement, anguish, anxiety, care, dread of death or nothingness and guilt. Meaninglessness is bad enough, but it is the least of our troubles. What are all of these dreadful terms but a modern translation of the old-fashioned “estate of sin and misery” into which men have fallen ?
Tillich has felt the trend, and with admirable candor, insight, and common sense, has confessed in a later publica- tion, Love, Power, and Justice (Ox- ford University Press, New York, i960, p. 25), that “estrangement presupposes oneness.” More explicitly a year earlier in his Theology of Culture, he says: “In the Christian tradition, there are three fundamental concepts. First, Esse que esse bonum est. This Latin phrase is a basic dogma of Christianity. It means ‘Being as being is good.’ Or in the biblical mythological form : God saw everything that he had created, and behold, it was good. The second state- ment is the universal fall — fall meaning the transition from this essential good- ness into existential estrangement from
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oneself, which happens in every living being and in every time. The third state- ment refers to the possibility of salva- tion. . . . These three considerations of human nature are present in all genuine theological thinking : essential goodness, existential estrangement, and the pos- sibility of something, a ‘third,’ beyond essence and existence, through which the cleavage is overcome and healed” (pp. 1 1 8, 1 19). These three stages in an authentic theology are evidently suc- cessive. Tillich’s present testimony is more effective because in his two volume Systematic Theology he held firmly the view that Creation and the Fall were si- multaneous. He formerly thought that we were compelled to believe that crea- tion and the fall are coincident. “Crea- turely freedom is the point at which Creation and the Fall coincide” ( S.T . I., p. 256). “There is no point in time and space in which created goodness was actualized and had existence.” There is no utopia in the past and will be none in the future. “Creation and estrangement are identical” (S.T. II, p. 44). There is no need to discuss the point for in later publications Tillich gives it up and shows that he cannot continue to believe that a loving God would create man in estrangement, if not in hostility to himself. It is plain that Tillich cannot continue to believe it.
In Tillich’s present view of the Fall it is an historic event and there was a time in the history of humanity, before sin by man had entered into the world (Rom. 5:12) when the way is opened to believe that in history at its end “Christ will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Heb. 9:28).
Tillich’s Being and Nothingness
The topic of the relation of Being to non-being or Nothingness has assumed major importance in recent years. The shadow has become of greater impor- tance than the sun which casts the shad- ow, as in the story of the man who made, he thought, a shrewd bargain with the devil on the promise of great wealth and the gift in return of his worthless shadow — and his soul. When the boys jeered after him on the sunny street, and people avoided him as a sinister figure and his fiancee broke her engagement, he discovered that with his shadow he had thrown away all hope of happiness in life.
The story would have no point were it not for the paradox that what has no value or even existence has usurped the leading role in philosophical drama which might well be called with Shake- speare “much ado about nothing,” but has been named in euphemism “existen- tialism.” When the critic wants to be sure of a laugh he will parody the fa- miliar hymn and sing: “How sweet the name of Being sounds in a believer’s ear.”
Tillich’s name is often associated with that of Bultmann. Both are called exis- tentialists, and they do not, to my knowl- edge, disown the soft impeachment. To be an existentialist is no reproach or advantage to a theologian, since this school of thought is completely neutral in religious faith. A glance at Pascal and Nietzsche, both called precursors and morning stars of existentialism, will show the extremes which may be found in religious attitudes. Thus Pas- cal says: “Jesus Christ is the Center of everything and the object of every- thing; and he who does not know him
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knows nothing of the order of the world, and nothing of himself.”
Nietzsche says repeatedly that “God is dead.” Karl Jaspers, in his definitive biography of Nietzsche, (translated into French, but not into English) declares that in this saying the philosopher did not make himself an atheist but aimed to clear the road for a “higher region” beyond good and evil. Jaspers believed that Nietzsche with this power could elevate the race by “severity, violence, slavery, tempter’s art and deviltry of every kind — by everything wicked, ter- rible, tyrannical, predatory, and serpen- tine in man” ( Beyond Good and Evil, Aph. 44). The title of the work from which this quotation is drawn is sig- nificant.
Kierkegaard, the founder of existen- tialism, was a Lutheran and Marcel is a Roman Catholic. Both would vote for the Ten Commandments, of which the sixth protects my life, the seventh my wife and family, the eighth my proper- ty, and the ninth my good name. Tillich is strong on the ethical emphasis in both testaments. “Biblical ethics means standing in ultimate decision for or against God” ( Biblical Religion, p. 46).
The being of God is the central prob- lem of Tillich’s Systematic Theology, I & II. Kierkegaard, deadly enemy of Hegel, had an implicit ontology when he spoke of the infinite qualitative dis- tinction of God from all other beings. Tillich in his ontological argument uses constantly the term “being-itself,” and very often “the power of being.” Being is a broader term than God. It does not distinguish but includes two kinds of be- ings, finite being — an abstraction from the multiplicity of beings — and an eter- nal, self-existent living God and Crea- tor. The “power of being” thus is am-
biguous. It can mean the power of God or a powerless abstraction from finite be- ings— impersonal, speechless and love- less. “God is love” is not derived from psychoanalysis or from dissection of Dasein, but from revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
Tillich sees a tree in his back yard and says that it “exists only because it participates in that power of being which is treehood” (S.T. II, p. 11). But can the putting on of the ‘hood,’ treehood, ever make a tree? I see from my window an enormous spruce tree towering over its neighbors and carry- ing up with it a tremendous weight of trunk and branches against the down- ward pull of gravitation. As I gaze on my tree I can only say with the poet in profound and reverent conviction, “Only God can make a tree.” We must be careful and not go back to the pre- Baconian age of science and change the nature of a thing into its efficient cause.
Tillich is still hopeful of the effort to assimilate the apostolic tradition and the modern mind. Others — Schleierma- cher, Hegel and modern liberals — have failed. But, he says, “There is no choice for us. We must try again” ( Biblical Religion, etc., p. 57). In every period that we know, and worse times are pre- dicted for the future, the modern mind is too frivolous, too self-centered, too much a lover of self, lover of pleasure and of money, and too little a lover of God to make this possible. “If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him” (I John 2:15). His view of the polarity of faith and doubt makes him bring together things that are poles apart, makes him mix oil and water. He is following here the dictum of a great revolutionist, Lenin, whose col- lected works show that he is no mean
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controversalist. The principle is that dialectics is the unity of opposites.
We are reminded of Shelling’s Sys- tem of Identity : Object and subject, real and ideal, nature and spirit are all identical in the absolute.
Tillich’s view of faith and doubt as correlates — that faith holds or hides doubt in its heart — obscures the distinc- tion between truth and falsehood. Til- lich says: “Faith and doubt do not es- sentially contradict each other. Faith is the continuous tension between itself and the doubt within itself” (p. 60). What kind of faith is he speaking of? It is not the kind of faith which Abra- ham had when he believed that God could raise the dead. It is not the faith which Moses had when he endured as seeing him who is invisible when God made a slave race his chosen people and delivered them from a mighty em- pire by a mighty hand and a stretched out arm.
It is not the faith which found ex- pression in the inspired eloquence of Romans, Chapter 8. God is on our side, and his love is assured to us by facts of history which have never been suc- cessfully denied. Christ died and he rose again the third day. Our hope is a living hope based upon these facts and upon the revelation that he is now upon the throne, ever living to make intercession for us. Then the organ with all the stops open peals forth in a glorious crescendo, and the chorus bursts forth in a tri- umphant challenge to all the forces of the universe and all the powers of evil to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It was not the faith of the early Chris- tians which placed the Cross above the Roman eagle, proud emblem of imperial power, Bishop Wescott, studying em-
peror worship, says of the early Chris- tians that their witness to an unseen world was “a pledge of a nobler free- dom than had ever been realized among men: that the belief in God, as made known to them in Christ, was the one safeguard against utter slavery.”
Harnack, in his great work The Ex- pansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, declares: “Now, for the first time, that testimony rose among men, which cannot ever be surpassed, the testimony that God is Love.”
The vacillating faith with which Browning’s Bishop Blougram, over his wine cups, pictures
A life of doubt diversified by faith, so easily interchangeable with
A life of faith diversified by doubt,
is as different as possible from the faith which is a matter of life and death to him who possesses it. The Master told his disciples not of a faith which could be discussed lightly in detachment over the wine cups, but of a powerful faith which could move mountains and move the arm that moves the world (Matt. 21:21, 22). The Apostle Paul, a pris- oner at Rome and in the imminent pros- pect of death, had the faith to declare to Timothy, “I know whom I have be- lieved, and am persuaded, that he is able . . .” (II Tim. 1 :i2). Shall I say also that it is the faith of Tillich when he quotes with profound admiration and appreciation both in his systematic work and in his printed sermons the passage in Romans 8 alluded to above ?
During the middle years of this cen- tury our philosophical schools have been haunted by the specter of non-being, nothingness, nihil, or whatever we may call it and the ghost has never been laid. What are we to do about it? Tillich
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himself admits that “the correlation of ontology and Biblical religion is an in- finite task,” which means that he has not solved it. For he says on the same page : “Against Pascal I say : The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the God of the philosophers is the same God. He is a person and the negation of himself as a person” (From Biblical Re- ligion, etc., p. 85). The tasks he assigns himself is not only “infinite,” it is im- possible so long as he keeps turning contradictions into correlates, and so long as he, with his contemporaries, Heidegger and Sartre, finds a place for nothingness in the conception of God or rejects God altogether.
Tillich believes that there are a few “converted” philosophers who have a “regenerated reason” and that some of them have an ultimate concern for Be- ing or being-itself, thus pointing to ulti- mate reality. But Being is the last ab- straction from a host of finite beings and belongs therefore, we have argued, in the finite sphere and cannot be ultimate. This abstraction then, whether assumed by Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, or Til- lich, cannot reach the ultimate which can only be the ground of all existence and can only be found in God. Biblical religion, whether expressed in scrip- tural passages (John 1 13, Col. 1 :i6, 17 ; Heb. 1 :2, 3 ; I Pet. 3 :22) or interpreted in the creeds, confessions, rituals, hymns and prayers of all the leading branches of the Church, shows that God created all things by and through the eternal Word, and is the Lord of all Being and all history, Lord of everything with which science deals, Lord of nature, and Lord of the destiny of men and of na- tions and empires and civilizations. No non-theistic existentialist can unite upon a credible and consistent ontology which
must reach to the ultimate ground of all existence, which is God. No ontol- ogy of this type can offer us a God that we can pray to and worship, or a God that can hear and answer prayer. Noth- ingness is usually regarded as something evil, something that ought not to be. It is associated with the last enemy, death, and the fear of death. What more fright- ening and frightful nightmare could there be than when one dreams that he is falling headlong into the bottomless pit of extinction? Barth shows clear in- sight in seeking to remove Nothingness as far from God as possible. The only concession he makes is to say that this nameless Nothing is what Jesus Christ destroyed by his work on the Cross. Whether this is the last word that can be said on the subject I cannot say. At any rate Biblical religion asserts that “God is light and in him is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5).
Tillich and the Gospels
The last unkindest cut of all is when Tillich assails the integrity and truth of the Gospels and invalidates the char- ter of the faith of the Church. Listen carefully when he says :
“Miracles cannot be interpreted in terms of a supernatural interference in natural processes. If such an interpreta- tion were true, the manifestation of the ground of being would destroy the structure of being, God would be split within himself, as religious dualism has asserted. It would be more adequate to call such a miracle ‘demonic,’ not be- cause it is produced by ‘demons,’ but because it discloses a ‘structure of de- struction’ (See Part IV, Sec. I.). It corresponds with the state of “being possessed’ in the mind and could be called ‘sorcery.’ The Supra-naturalistic
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theory of miracles makes God a sor- cerer and cause of ‘possession’ ; it con- fuses God with demonic structure in the mind and in reality” ( S.T . I., p. 116).
If I use an ad hominem argument and insist that the “split” is in Tillich him- self my only excuse will be that he asked for it. In order to save space my comments on the above passage, to adopt a musical figure, will be in an abrupt staccato style rather than in the more smooth and leisurely legato.
1. It is dangerous for a theologian to set limits on what can happen in na- ture, or what could happen in Galilee during the ministry of Christ, especially when this restriction has already been removed and outmoded by the advance of science. We refer to the postulated and inviolable “structure of being.”
2. In recent years two powerful ham- mers have been beating against the an- vil of the trustworthiness of the Gos- pels, Bultmann’s hammer of demythol- ogizing in Germany and Tillich’s ham- mer of deliteralizing in this country. To one who has studied the course of Criti- cism from Reimarus to Wrede and be- yond it is difficult to believe that the anvil will be destroyed. “The anvil wears the hammers out, you know.” If one law of nature can because of inter- ference repeal all the other laws, then the tree which bore Newton’s apple could not have risen one inch from the ground.
3. When a man is at the end of his rope and finds that he cannot save him- self and knows that no man can by any means redeem his brother, then he will look to the supernatural and the mighty works of God as his only hope for this life and the next, and will look to the Resurrection of Christ which gives death its death blow and kindles the
sure and certain hope of everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
4. Enormous industry and energy have been expended in the past cen- tury and a half in the search for the “hu- man-historical” Jesus underneath the text of the Gospels. In Latin there have been three stages in the course of that great effort. Ant Deus, aut non bonus (God or not good) ; aut Deus, aut non sanus (God or not of sound mind) ; aut Deus, aut ignotus (God or unknown and unknowable). Remove the miracu- lous from the narratives and no outlines of any definite figure remain. Turn to the teaching and only a faint whisper is echoed from the Galilean hills. The failure to draw from the Gospels a credible picture of a non-miraculous Jesus has built up a cumulative argu- ment of great power for the truth of the Gospel miracles.
5. The cure for science when it seems to invalidate religion is more and better science. Tillich when he makes his orac- ular diatribe against miracles quoted above, is, if I understand him, living in the Newtonian, not the Einstein age. His untouchable “structure of being” (I must qualify again by saying if I un- derstand him) seems to imply a block world, making our universe a block universe of matter and motion, a rigidly deterministic mechanical universe of matter and motion, and making man into an automaton. In plain English this is not an up-to-date science.
Newton’s laws of motion and of mat- ter afterward hardened into the strictly mechanical view of the universe. My fellow townsman, Albert Einstein in Princeton, is my authority for saying that this theory is no longer a postulate of science.
Einstein practically preached its fu-
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neral sermon when he said that the ad- vance of electrical science has “caused a complete breakdown of the belief that all phenomena can be explained me- chanically.” And again that “the new quantum physics removes us still fur- ther from the old mechanical view, and a retreat to the former position seems, more than ever, unlikely” (Einstein and Infeld, The Evolution of Physics, 1938, pp. 125, 309).
Science, to make way for its own ad- vance, removed the strait jacket from the spirit of man, and opened a wide avenue for the freedom of God in the exercise of his grace.
6. Some would discard all the deeds of Jesus but save his words out of the wreck. Let us see how what he began to do and to teach are separable. Bult- mann in his Jesus, 1929, saved the words of Jesus from the wreck, but said that if Jesus of Nazareth never existed it would make no difference to his religious life. Tillich in his printed sermons says that Jesus is not the truth because his teachings are true, but the other way about. His teachings are true because he is the truth ( The New Be- ing, p. 70). Look for a moment at the eleventh chapter of Matthew, contain- ing the most intimate disclosure of his relations to God in the Synoptic Gos- pels and the great invitation to bur- dened man. When the Baptist sends to ask, “Are you he that is to come?” the answer of Jesus was his works. “The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the good news preached to them” (Matt. 11 :5). The guilt of the cities where his mighty works were done was that they were blind to the meaning of his redeeming works (Matt.
11 :2i-24). If the works were false, so were the words (See also John 15:22- 24.).
7. I must say a word about the Res- urrection where a volume would be more adequate. Tillich rejects the physi- cal theory, although he says it is the most beautiful, and the psychological theory of visions, and proposes a “Res- titution Theory.” This is that some dis- ciples who had fled to Galilee became convinced the New Being into whom the “man Jesus” had been transformed, could not have been defeated by his death as a criminal. This subjective ex- perience, followed by others, was the origin, overlaid by legendary matter, of the faith in the Resurrection. Til- lich’s Resurrection theory means a man-made resurrection instead of a rais- ing from the dead by the power of God. (References are too numerous and need not be given.) The restitution theory is weak, made by disciples in Galilee who had never investigated the empty tomb. In a couple of places Tillich sup- ports the judgment that his theory is weak. “It (the theory, while he thinks adequate) must also be considered a theory. . . .” It remains (he says can- didly) “in the realm of probability, and does not have the certainty of faith” (S.T. I., p. 58). He adds that “the at- titude of the New Testament and espe- cially of the non-literalistic Apostle Paul justifies the theory of restitution” (ibid). Was Paul non-literalistic when he said that Christ died, was buried, arose on the third day, and appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve? (I Cor. 15:3, 4). Was he non-literalistic and could be accused of “literalistic distor- tion of symbols and myths” (ibid., p. 152) when on the way to Damascus the Risen Lord spoke to him in his child-
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hood’s language, in words twice re- peated before Agrippa and before the mob in Jerusalem, and reported again by his most intimate friend, Luke (Chap- ters 9, 22, and 26) ? Who in the world could have invented those words of identity with the church, “Why do you ; persecute me?” words which burnt themselves into Paul’s memory and changed the course of his life and the history of Europe? A noted French New Testament scholar, Maurice Go- guel, has found the source of the four Gospels in a narrative written during the eighteen months before the conver- sion of Paul which closed with the pas- sion and left out both the Resurrection and the Great Commission in Matt. 28. I am ready now to rest my assurance of Jesus’ resurrection upon a single ar- gument, until it is refuted. Who at this period would have written such a “gos- pel” of bad news as is contemplated? Would the Jews who hated Jesus and wanted to forget him? Would the Jews who were bitterly disappointed by the hoped for political Messiah? Would the Christians and Apostles who, before they saw the empty tomb and the marks in the hands of the risen Savior, were in deep despondency and despair ? Who would think of writing the life of one who died seemingly in defeat and disil- lusion and ended his life in desertion, darkness and blood? I am glad that there are “many proofs” (Acts 1:3), the most convincing and irrefutable among which are the empty grave never accounted for, the appearances to a number of well-known people who lived long after the event, and then our fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ, who has promised to be with us all the days. It is good for us to see how broadly based is our cer-
tainty of the resurrection. It is well for us to walk about Zion, to tell the tow- ers thereof, to mark well her bulwarks and consider her palaces that we may tell the generation following. This God is our God forever and ever. He will be our guide even unto death.
It would strengthen my hypothesis of the two Tillichs if time and space per- mitted us to place in parallel columns what he says in his Systematic Theology and in his printed sermons. It is my misfortune that I have never heard him preach. In his ecstatic mood and his moments of illumination he has in- sights, as when he is in the pulpit or preparing for it, insights that can il- lume and inspire his hearers and read- ers. Comparison between his two moods show that contradictions have no terror for him. Is the relation between the two teachings correlation or polarity? He is certainly equally sincere and conscien- tious in both roles. His divided loyalty is a challenge to the psychologist. He has two sermons on healing, one of them with the text (Matt. 10:1) that Jesus gave his disciples authority “to overcome unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity.” There can be no doubt, as I see it, that Jesus was conscious of having miraculous power which he never used for his own advantage. In the second sermon he says that “the woman who encountered him,” a chron- ic invalid for many years, “was made whole, the demoniac who met him,” who broke bonds and fetters was the terror of the neighborhood, “was liber- ated from his mental cleavage” ( The New Being, p. 43). These cases were surely miracles ; they are wonderful, they were signs of his redeeming pow-
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er and part of it, and of destroying the work of the devil and restoring lost in- tegrity of personality.
Miracles are not excess baggage, they are not the cargo which may be thrown over to lighten the ship, they are the ballast which keeps the ship steady amid the shriek of the tempest and the surg- ing of the waves. They are the break- ing through of the spiritual into the natural order for a redemptive purpose. They answer the questions of our deep- est and most passionate and most per- sonal concerns : Does God exist ? Can he save me ?
We are reminded often that no final appraisal of Tillich’s work should be
made until his third volume appears. Then we may hope that the differences between the two Tillichs may be made less glaring. When we remember Au- gustine’s Retractations, the changes in Barth’s views since he wrote his com- mentary on the Epistle to the Romans, changes which all thinkers are expected and permitted to make, and the radical and profound change which he himself made in his interpretation of the Fall, we hope that further study, reflection and experience will cause him to make changes, even radical changes, in those aspects of his teachings which, while interesting in their novelty, cut deeply into “Biblical religion.”
BOOK REVIEWS
THEOLOGY
The Church’s Confession Under Hitler, by Arthur C. Cochrane. The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1962. Pp. 317. $6.50.
The Barmen Declaration is undoubtedly the most influential theological statement of the twentieth century. It grew out of the Nazi period of German history and was directed against the errors of the so-called “German Christians,” churchmen who succumbed to the Hitler propaganda and who confused the ideology of the Third Reich with the historic Christian faith. This Declaration, adopted by the First Confessional Synod of the Ger- man Evangelical Church, meeting in Barmen, on May 29-31, 1934, was the basis of the “Confessing Church,” that heroic group of Reformed, Lutheran, and United church members who furnished the most consistent opposition to Hitler of any German group.
It is the author’s contention that Barmen represents something more than resistance to a totalitarian state. “From is inception,” he writes, “it was essentially a struggle of the Church against itself for itself. It was a strug- gle to recover the confession of faith and a struggle to remain faithful to it in the preach- ing and actions of the Church.” Barmen, by pointing the Church back to Holy Scripture and to her historic confessions, enabled the Church to rediscover itself, its primary al- legiance, and thus its proper mission in the German Reich.
The first chapter details the background of the Nazi movement, the second contains a description of the theological movement between 1917 and 1933, and subsequent chap- ters trace the history of the emerging strug- gle between the “German Christians” and the “Confessing Church,” culminating in the Synod of Barmen. Many familiar figures appear in these pages : Karl Barth, the spirit behind Barmen and the hero of the book, Martin Niemoller and his brother, Otto Pi- per, Wilhelm Niesel, Hans Asmussen, and a host of others that should not be forgotten. In an age of expediency they demonstrated to us how to stand.
In the final chapter, “The Nature of a Confession of Faith,” the author uses the Church struggle to illustrate the characteris- tics of a genuine Confession and raises the question of the significance of Barmen for the Church today. It is to be regretted that this question was not answered and that the author did not go further by pointing out the implications of Barmen for present situa- tions in which the Church must struggle “against itself for itself” in order to be a viable instrument of its Lord.
Dr. Cochrane is the distinguished profes- sor of systematic theology in Dubuque Theo- logical Seminary and an authority in the theology of Karl Barth. In this book he has rendered a much-needed service, not only in detailing the history of the German church struggle, but also in supplying in a series of appendices the not readily available texts of many of the most important documents it produced.
Jas. I. McCord
The Second Vatican Council, by Henri Daniel-Rops. Hawthorn Books Inc., New York, 1962. Pp. 160. $3.50.
The Council, Reform and Reunion, by Hans Kiing. Sheed and Ward, New York, 1961. Pp. 208. $3.95.
The decision to summon an ecumenical council came as a sudden inspiration to Pope John XXIII (“Suddenly and unexpectedly we were struck”), and since its announcement speculation has been rife about its every as- pect. For one thing, will it be called a con- tinuation of the First Vatican Council, which was never adjourned but was ended by the approach of Piedmontese artillery without getting far into its agenda but after promul- gating the dogma of papal infallibility, or the Second Vatican Council? (Correspondence from the Vatican now refers to the Second Council). Other questions concern agenda, the role of Protestant observers, and how long the council will run. The October open- ing date has been announced, with the first session recessing before Christmas, but pre- sumably second and third sessions will be held,
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one after Easter and the other in the fall of 1963, and there may be more.
There is reason, of course, for both specu- lation and anticipation. Vatican Councils are not scheduled regularly, as are Assemblies of the World Council of Churches. Through- out the Church’s history there have been only twenty ecumenical councils, the first con- vened by the Emperor Constantine in Nicea in 325 and the twentieth held in the Vatican in 1869-1870. Moreover, ecumenical councils have extraordinary powers ; they are above canon law. As Dr. Kiing comments, a Vatican Council “in union with the Pope . . . has universal legislative authority in every field of ecclesiastical law, and can thus carry out full-scale reform throughout the entire Church.” This power, and the possibility it holds, will explain why many inside the Roman Catholic Church as well as outside it look forward in anxious anticipation to the Council’s decisions.
Henri Daniel-Rops and Hans Kiing are Catholics, the former a member of the French Academy and the latter a member of the Catholic Theological faculty of Tubingen and author of a widely praised study of Karl Barth’s theology.
Daniel-Rops’ volume bears the subtitle, “The Story behind the Ecumenical Council of Pope John XXIII,” and is written for those who want a short, popular sketch of the ear- lier councils and of the organizational prepa- rations for the upcoming one.
Hans Kiing’s volume is another matter. It is a work of major significance and deserves a wide reading, as much by American Catho- lics as by Protestants. Here, too, there is historical material, but the author’s real con- cern is with what the Vatican Council might accomplish. He begins by citing the change of atmosphere the Council’s announcement has brought about on both sides, the grow- ing dialogue between Catholics and Protes- tants and the relaxed attitudes within both traditions. Professor Kiing’s great hope is that the Council will be an instrument of renewal within Catholicism. He points out that reformation is not a Protestant monop- oly but is necessary also for Rome, since it too is a “communio peccatorum,” and illus- trates how the Church has been renewed in the past. Catholic renewal must steer a course between “opportunist modernism” and “op-
portunist traditionalism” in “fidelity to the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” the author argues, and then sets down certain reforming ideals for the Church today. They include a fresh appreciation of the genuinely religious mo- tives in the Protestant Reformation, increased concern for Holy Scripture, development of the liturgy into a people’s liturgy, a fresh understanding of universal priesthood, and a greater emphasis on the devotional life of the ordinary church member. Throughout Pro- fessor Kiing writes with great candor and with eager expectation of the Council’s re- sults. In any tug of war that may be going on within the papal curia it is to be hoped that those of Kiing’s persuasion will be vic- torious.
Both authors write as loyal members of the Catholic Church and as defenders of the Petrine office. They agree that the Council will not proceed with any new definition of Marian dogmas or develop further definitions of controversial theological doctrines. Rather, the Council will be, as Cardinal Tardini has remarked, “an internal event in the Church.” To this, Pope John added, in his Encyclical, “Ad Petri Cathedram”:
The chief end of the council is to advance the development of the Catholic Faith, the renewal of Christian life among the peo- ple, the adaption of ecclesiastical discipline to contemporary conditions. Assuredly, this will afford a wonderful spectacle of truth, of unity, of charity, and we are confident that in seeing it those who are separated from this Apostolic See will see in it a warm invitation to seek and find unity.
It is clear, then, that the Council will not meet to discuss union. There is a prior ques- tion with which to deal. It is intended to be a reforming or renewing Council, within Catholicism. Observers from the World Coun- cil of Churches and the various confessional bodies have accepted invitations to attend. They are, in the main, theologians and his- torians, scholars who will serve as eyes of the Protestant Churches and who cannot by any stretch of the imagination be thought of as officials able to negotiate union. It would be foolish to expect anything more to come out of the Council than certain reforms with- in the Roman Church, but this in itself is of
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the greatest significance and should engage the interest and prayers of every Christian.
Jas. I. McCord
Communism and Christian Faith, by Lester de Koster, Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1962. Pp. 158. $3-50.
This vigorous book is an expansion of an earlier volume, All Ye That Labor, now out of print. It is a well-balanced treatment of the subject by a writer who is passionately interested in truth without favor. His anti- communism is unimpeachable, at times over- emphasized. But he places it within the so- cial recognition that Communism has its ap- peal in large parts of the world because of the illusions and injustices of economic liberal- ism ; and he places it within the theological understanding that the battleground between God and the Devil is within ourselves first of all, and that the crisis of Communism pre- sents us with a judgment. It is on the whole the Calvinist sense of God’s judgment and a rigorous loyalty to a truth which cannot be made in our social image which tames and directs the author’s abhorrence of the whole Communist system into constructive chan- nels. It is therefore a useful book placed against Fred Schwarz’ “Christian Anti-Com- munism” and alongside of John Bennett’s Christianity and Communism Today (As- sociation Press), the National Council of Churches’ Christian’s Handbook on Com- munism, and similar volumes as study ma- terial for intelligent church groups.
The book has one weakness. It is not writ- ten out of experience with Communists where they are active or powerful. It therefore lacks the subtlety of human insight to be a pro- found book. This shows up in the bibliography as well as in the writing, where some of the finest treatments of Christian-Communist en- counter by those engaged in it, are missing. To name three of them: Helmut Gollwitzer, Unwilling Journey (Muhlenberg Press) ; Nicholas Berdyaev, The Origin of Russian Communism (U. of Michigan Press) ; and Johannes Hamel, A Christian in East Ger- many (Association Press).
Charles C. West
BIBLICAL
The Thanksgiving Hymns. Trans- lated and Annotated with an Introduc- tion. (Studies on the texts of the Desert of Judah. Edited by J. van der Ploeg, Volume III), by Menahem Mansoor. Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 3, Michigan, 1961. Pp. xi -f- 227. $7.00.
The life of the Essene was devoted en- tirely to the praise of God and the study of his word. We not only have many “pesh- ers” or commentaries on various books of the Old Testament from the library at Qumran, but we also have a collection of hymns which were used in the worship of the community. Several translations of these noble hymns are now available in various handbooks on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but the definitive work in English is the book under review, written by Prof. Menahem Mansoor, of the University of Wisconsin. These deeply spiritual psalms, or Hodayoth, as they are known in Hebrew, resemble and often echo the language of the Biblical psalms. They constitute an impor- tant source for the theological doctrines of the Qumran Sect. In the introduction to this volume, the author devotes a long chapter to the study of the most important of these doc- trines.
The main purpose of the book, however, is to give the reader a study of the Essene hymns based on the texts themselves. The description and dating of the scroll, the lin- guistic aspects of the Hebrew text and its relation to Biblical Hebrew are expertly dis- cussed by Prof. Mansoor in the introduction. He, like Dupont-Sommer and Licht, divides the contents of the scroll into thirty-two in- dividual hymns, most of which begin with the stereotyped formula, “I praise thee, 0 Lord, because. . . .” The author also sup- plies us with a summary of each hymn.
One of the puzzling problems of these re- ligious poems is their authorship. In most cases they seem to reflect the personal ex- periences and feelings of a single individual. Although the Teacher of Righteousness, the reputed founder of the Qumran Community, is never mentioned in the Hymn Scroll, many scholars believe that he is the author of the work, especially when one compares what is
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said about the Teacher of Righteousness in the Habakkuk Commentary and the Damas- cus Document with the obviously autobio- graphical passages in the Essene hymns. If this theory of authorship proves to be correct, we must recognize from these mystical con- fessions one of the loftiest figures in the his- tory of religion.
After the lengthy introduction there fol- lows the excellent translation of the hymns themselves. “The purpose here is to present an authentic translation, as faithful as pos- sible to the source. It is humbly hoped that competent scholars and theologians with no access to Hebrew will be able to use the text as a basis for further studies and research” (p. 96). This method contrasts sharply with that of T. H. Gaster in his translation of the scrolls {The Dead Sea Scriptures in English Translation, N.Y., 1956), which is more often a paraphrase with little docu- mentation to support his free renditions.
Prof. Mansoor’s translation is annotated with copious textual, lexicographical and theological notes. One is impressed not only with the author’s erudition in textual and philological matters, but also with his sound judgment and open-mindedness in matters of interpretation. Twelve pages of bibliography and numerous indices add to the value of this outstanding volume on the Thanksgiving Hymns from Qumran.
Charles T. Fritsch
The Royal Psalms, by Keith R. Crim. John Knox Press, Richmond, Va., 1962. Pp. 127. $2.75.
One of the most significant phases of Old Testament study in the past few decades has been the investigation of the nature of king- ship in Israel — its origins, its influence on Israel’s religion, and its relation to the Mes- sianic hope. In this book Dr. Crim, Associ- ate Professor of Bible at Taejon Presbyterian College in Korea, introduces to American readers the research of German and Scandi- navian scholars on the so-called “Messianic” Psalms, which were used in connection with the annual celebration of the Davidic king- ship, the Royal Zion Festival. The author gives an exposition of Pss. 2, 72, no and
seven others, plus a study of 2 Samuel 23 : 1-7, in the second part of the book.
The first part sets the stage for the ex- position by discussing in detail the begin- nings of the Israelite monarchy and its unique charismatic character, the Biblical evidence for a yearly festival commemorating the choice of Jerusalem and the Davidic dynasty for the rule of God’s people, and the importance of these concepts for the Mes- sianic ideal in Israel’s thought and life.
This book serves as an excellent introduc- tion to a significant yet complex area of re- search in Old Testament studies today. It should be of particular value for the preach- ing ministry, as well as for the Seminary classroom.
Charles T. Fritsch
The Scrolls and Christian Origins, by Matthew Black. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1961. Pp. 206. $3.95.
The basis of this important book was a course of lectures delivered in May, 1956, in Union Theological Seminary, New York. Even though publication is five years later, the value of the book is not seriously harmed, since its focus is not so much on the scrolls themselves as on the light which they shed upon the beginnings of Christianity. Profes- sor Black, Principal of St. Mary’s College, University of St. Andrews in Scotland and a distinguished New Testament scholar, takes us backstage of New Testament times and shows us, from Jewish and patristic sources, how widespread the “movement of Jewish or para-Jewish ‘non-conformity’” was in the early days of Christianity. Numerous Jewish sects, of which the Qumran Essenes were just one group, presented a “solid and un- broken front to the established religion of the day,” and, according to the author, it was from this “unorthodox” side of Judaism that Christianity sprang. “It seems probable that this vast movement of ‘Jewish’ or ‘Hebrew’ sectarianism represents the survival into New Testament times of the old pre-Ezra type of Hebrew religion ; and its puritanism would then stem from the ancient asceticism of the religion of Israel” (p. 167).
Professor Black believes that the link be- tween this side of Judaism and the New
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Testament is to be found in the ‘Hebraists’ or Hebrew Christians of the Book of Acts, and more particularly in the “Sect of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5), which continued the ancient Israelite institution of the life- long Nazirite. This same Nazirite strain can be detected in John the Baptist, whose rela- tion to Qumran and its teachings is recog- nized by most scholars.
The last part of the book deals with the religious institutions and theological concep- tions of the scrolls, especially with those which bear some resemblance or relationship to Christian ideas or institutions. The Qum- ran baptismal rites, which were practised in relation to a movement of repentance and entry into a New Covenant, “prepared the way, at some considerable remove, for the full Christian doctrine of baptism” (p. 98). The sacred meal of the Qumran priestly type, with its Messianic overtones, may well lie behind the earliest forms of the Eucharist in the primitive Church.
The author has a good deal to say about the eschatological beliefs of the Qumran community. He points out that many of these ideas are derived from the closing chapters of Ezekiel. He might well have noted in this connection that the very site of Qumran was probably chosen by the Essenes for eschatological reasons based on Ezekiel 47.
This is a scholarly work which shows great erudition on the part of the author. One may disagree with some of his ideas regarding the historical origins of the sect, or the identity of the Teacher of Righteousness, but no one who is interested in the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for New Testa- ment studies can afford to ignore this book.
Charles T. Fritsch
When Israel Came Out of Egypt, by Gabriel Hebert. John Knox Press, Richmond, Virginia, 1961. Pp. 128. $i-75-
This slim volume devotes its five chapters to a consideration of the Exodus as an event in the faith of Israel, and in the history of the world, considering the use of that event in the narratives of the Bible, the relation of that event to Moses, and its meaning for Christianity.
The approach of the author is avowedly devotional, not critical. As a consequence, the role of the God of Israel, in and through the historical event of the Exodus, is given primary consideration. A sane view of the miraculous elements involved helps to make that consideration valid and coercive. The Covenant is thus seen, and rightly so, as the complement to the Exodus as an event, and as the means whereby the relation of Israel to her independent Deity is resolved. The necessary point is also made that one cannot take the faith of Israel seriously without pri- or commitment to that faith ! For Hebert, the uniqueness of that faith rests on the Ex- odus event, and the subsequent covenantal re- lationship.
From the historical and scholarly side, the author makes clear that the Exodus tradition can be given firm historical ground, in spite of the unanswerability of a string of specifics connected with it. He presents a good sum- mary of what has been learned in the near present in regard to Biblical backgrounds, and makes plain the realization that the Bible cannot either be completely documented, or simply dismissed as myth. A fine description is given of the transition of Israel from a political unit to a “faith,” based on the Lord of history and the hope of future deliverance. A brief, but good, summary is also given of the present schools of Biblical criticism, from literalism to Uppsala, and the rise of Biblical theology. The chronology of the book is up to date and the discussion of the archaeo- logical and historical setting of the Exodus problem is informed. The plague narrative is seen as a conflate account of JEP, set in stylized form. No conclusions are offered for the location of Sinai, other than the gen- eral area. The biblical account of the cross- ing of the sea is presented simply as a “mys- tery,” in accord with the devotional view- point of the book.
The author follows Albright on the Exo- dus dates, and on certain features of (early) Israelite religious development. Wright, et al., are followed in regard to the amphicty- onic site, but Noth’s view of tribal disperse- ment during the Exodus period seems favored. An Uppsalian flavor is also introduced by reference to oral traditions as an explana- tion of textual vagaries. The acceptance of Rowley’s view of the role of Joseph (as the
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vizier of Ikhnaton) is not coercive, nor is the author’s interpretation of the numbers of the Exodus account strictly necessary. The desire to establish the Mosaic relation to the Exodus event has led the author to hold both sides of the argument equally well! Un- fortunately he misses the difference between later attribution as a sign of both veneration and as a means of authentication, and the actualities of history. The use of JHVH con- fuses the reader unnecessarily, including the preference of the author for that form over the Hebrew (sic) YHWH. The “parallels” to Christianity are, of course, untenable, ex- cept as devotional comparisons — a fact the author’s style and purpose make evident. In that light, as well, the little book is warmly recommended.
Philip C. Hammond
The Patriarchal Age, by Charles F. Pfeiffer. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1961. Pp. 128. $2.95.
In seventeen extremely brief chapters, the author sketches the organization, family re- lationships, social context, culture and daily life of the Patriarchs, as well as discussing the matter of the historicity of the patriarchal narratives, the patriarchal religion and the literature involved.
Professor Pfeiffer gives the reader a bet- ter-than-average general coverage of the Pa- triarchal Age as depicted in the Old Testa- ment. His presentation of the currently known data of history relating to the period is also very well done, and his summary of extant legal codes is excellent. In his opening chap- ter he furnishes a very brief over-view of various views held in Biblical circles today and honestly chooses sides in the ring of mod- ern critical approaches to Biblical scholarship.
It is in the author’s use of archaeological material and in his interpretations of history that this reviewer finds his basic criticisms, however. Pfeiffer presupposes the “essential historicity” of the Biblical records, and then feels it necessary to prove that historicity by proof-texting, as it were, from archaeol- ogy and from known historical records. The assumptions seems to be that the historical validity of the latter will uphold the former. It is not to be denied that the Patriarchal Period, as presented in the Old Testament,
clearly reflects the Middle Bronze Age in Palestine. Nor is it to be doubted that many newly discovered records and practices of ancient Near Eastern life mirror situations to be found in the Bible. Yet, correspondence and proof are not identical, and parallels do not make patriarchs 1
Still in the realm of historical interpreta- tion, the author has a strong tendency to moralize the events recorded in biblical his- tory, and to evaluate in terms of contem- porary standards. Any such reading back into the Old Testament of Christian ethical de- mands, or even contemporary mores, is to- tally invalid. Pious reconstruction and ro- mantic supposition becloud the essential spir- ituality of the biblical materials, rather en- hance it.
From the objective point of view, the dichotomy between the religion of the patri- archs and the baalism of their neighbors is much too strongly drawn. That the pre- Israelite religion of the Hebrews can be re- constructed for the patriarchal period, on the basis of the Biblical text, is doubtful. A naive universalism is also introduced, along with theological “distinctions” (e.g. those of Vos and Bromiley) which are not always neces- sary or really relevant.
In short, although some sections of this small volume are extremely well done, other parts must be read with the presuppositions and assumptions of the author carefully kept in mind.
Philip C. Hammond
The Phoenicians, by Donald Har- den. Thames and Hudson, London, 1962. Pp. 336. 30s.
In this volume Dr. Harden, Director of the London Museum, has presented the re- sults of modern scholarship concerning the Phoenicians in a very readable form. He discusses the origins of the Phoenicians, the geography and history of their homeland and colonies, their government and social struc- ture, their religion, their language and script, their warfare, and their industry and com- merce.
Because of the scope of the subject the author has not always been able to give a detailed treatment, but has limited himself to the most interesting and important ma-
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terial. As the author admits, it has also been impossible to give all the points of view in areas where the interpretation of the evi- dence is controversial. He has given his own interpretation, which is in most instances that of the majority of scholars and that most easily defended. These two necessary limita- tions may at times be disconcerting to the specialist but will in fact enhance the in- terest and value of the book for the reader who seeks a basic introduction to the subject.
However, Dr. Harden’s treatment of Phoe- nician inscriptions is less valuable. His trans- lation of the inscription of Abibaal is in- correct. He introduces a problem concerning the sarcophagus inscription of Eshmunazar which is answered by the inscription itself.
Incidentally, Dr. Harden is also inconsistent in the date which he assigns to the above mentioned sarcophagus. After having pointed out the difficulty in determining the date of the reign of Eshmunazar, King of Sidon, and having suggested some date in the 6th cen- tury B.C. as most likely, a position with which the reviewer takes issue, Dr. Harden oscillates between dating his sarcophagus to the 6th century and to the 5th century.
Nonetheless Dr. Harden has made a real contribution in this study of the history and culture of the Phoenicians, who as the close neighbors of the Israelites strongly influenced the culture of Israel and who left as a legacy to the world one of its most important pos- sessions, its alphabet.
William R. Lane
The Birth of the Christian Religion (La Naissance du Christianisme) and The Origin of the New Testament (Les Origines du Nouveau Testament), by Alfred Firmin Loisy. Authorized trans- lation from the French by L. P. Jacks. University Books, New Hyde Park, N.Y., 1962. Pp. xix -f- 414 and 332. $10.00.
These two principal works of the most outstanding Catholic modernist were pub- lished in 1933 and 1936 and appeared in Eng- lish translations in London in 1948 and 1950 respectively. Covering the whole ground of New Testament History and Introduction,
they exhibit both the brilliance of the French author’s mind and also its conspicuous weak- nesses. Father Loisy had a complete com- mand of the vast amount of information available in those two areas, and he interprets and arranges it in a most imposing way. But the principle of strict rationality which he applies to his subject, and which makes his picture of the Primitive Church so impres- sive, is also his undoing. If this picture of early Christianity presents a coherent and consistent picture, it is because he fills in the many gaps of information with daring hy- potheses. Moreover, with his positivistic-so- ciological outlook he completely fails to ac- count for the greatness of Jesus and his apos- tles, as well as for the strangeness of the events that took place in the early decades of our era.
Loisy was a rebel by nature. He rose up not only against his own church. Deeply influenced as he was by liberal Protestant scholarship, he, nevertheless, rebelled against it, too. In his view, it was full of contradic- tions and lacked the courage of imagination. In his desire to overcome its failures he acted as heir of a tradition, which considered his- tory primarily as the outcome of man’s in- tellectual efforts, and thus the whole history of the Primitive Church was interpreted as proceeding in logical sequence. Modern Bib- lical scholarship has in the meantime become aware of the vexing element of irrationalism in history and of its apparent whims. The modern scholar is far less inclined to contend that he knows everything and he is capable of explaining all the riddles of history. In view of this radical change of scholarly cli- mate, Loisy’s great work, suggestive and stimulating as it is, is definitely dated.
Otto A. Piper
Lists of Words Occurring Frequent- ly in the Coptic New Testament ( Sahid - ic Dialect), compiled by Bruce M. Metzger. E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1061. Pp. 24. Old. 3- ($.85).
Good word lists are not only very useful for persons who wish to learn a new lan- guage as rapidly as possible, but they are also of great value to teachers and especially to
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scholars. This list has been very carefully prepared by a first-rate specialist, and the reviewer has not noted a single printer’s error in the list proper (there is one in the title of the brochure).
The importance of the Coptic language has increased greatly in recent years. Not only did the 1961 census of Egypt establish that the number of Copts is close to 6,400,000 — more than three times the more cautious ear- lier estimates — but there is now a definite renaissance of religious and intellectual cul- ture among the Copts, in spite of very ad- verse conditions. Even more important to historians is the fact that such discoveries as the Manichaean library of Faiyum and the early Gnostic library of Chenoboskion (Nag Hammadi) are revolutionizing our knowledge of the history of religions. The historian of Christianity, as well as the stu- dent of Hellenistic-Roman and Iranian civili- zation must now learn Coptic, if he is to control his field properly. Second and third- hand information is never good enough for a scientific historian.
As a curiosity, it may be added that the reviewer began to study Coptic because of his interest in the vocalization of ancient Egyptian. His first studies go back to 1918, and after many years during which he was practically the only worker, the subject has recently been taken up by half a dozen scholars (including T. O. Lambdin in this country), with very remarkable results. The subject is not purely linguistic; it has very important historical repercussions, as will appear in still unpublished studies of the re- viewer. In order to work successfully in all these fields a knowledge of Coptic is indis- pensable.
W. F. Albright
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BALTIMORE, MD.
Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, by George E. Mylonas. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.T., 1961. Pp. 346. $8.50.
For over thirty years Professor Mylonas of Washington University, St. Louis, has been associated with the work of excavation at Eleusis, a small town about fourteen miles
west of Athens. In antiquity from Mycenaean to Roman times there stood at Eleusis the world-famous temple of Demeter. During almost two millennia pilgrims from all over the civilized world would travel to this cen- ter of the Demeter cult and participate in the ritual of initiation, the details of which were jealously kept secret from outsiders.
Now the archaeologist’s spade has un- earthed foundations of six successive temples, or halls of initiation, each larger than the former. In the process of expansion, no an- cient architect dared to move the location of the inner repository (the Anaktoron ) away from the ground on which the original My- cenaean shrine had once stood.
The cult of Demeter at Eleusis was general- ly regarded as the most elevating and noble of the several competing mystery religions of antiquity. Even Plato, who generally spoke depreciatingly of such cults, had only praise when referring to the Eleusinian mysteries. So carefully guarded were the secret rites of initiation into the cult that only tantaliz- ingly brief comments have been preserved by ancient writers. The only literary source of any considerable extent is the Hymn to De- meter, and its language is designedly obscure and indirect. The comments in the Church Fathers are, without exception, adverse, for they regarded the competing rituals as in- spired by demons in order to confuse weak Christians.
In the book under review, Professor My- lonas describes the early history and archaeo- logical remains at Eleusis. He takes the reader on a guided tour of the Museum which houses many of the artifacts discovered at the site of the temple. The plates depicting the more important statues and other ob- jects are remarkably clear. A large part of the book surveys the scanty and scattered literary references to the Eleusinian mys- teries. Here Mylonas shows a salutary rigor in questioning many opinions which have been held by previous scholars on the basis of insufficient evidence. For example, he is unwilling to agree with the widely held view that the drama of a sacred marriage ( liieros gatnos ) was enacted as part of the initiatory rites. Furthermore, Mylonas questions the legitimacy of the conjectural emendation of a statement made by Clement of Alexandria which forms the basis of the view that a
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sacramental meal was part of the rites of initiation. (It will be recalled that Professor Percy Gardner had thrown out the suggestion that the Apostle Paul, having stopped off at Eleusis, was so much intrigued by the pos- sibilities of a sacred meal of communion with one another and with the Deity, that he henceforth introduced such a ceremony into the primitive church.) The net result of My- lonas’s book is not only to strengthen and enlarge what can be deduced from the archae- ological remains, but to question and, in part, to reduce the area of “assured results” based on the literary analysis of ambiguous and fragmentary testimonies.
All in all, this is a significant contribution to a subject which has fascinated hundreds of modern scholars.
Bruce M. Metzger
The Epistles to the Romans and Thessalonians. (Calvin’s New Testa- ment Commentaries, Vol. 8). Trans, by R. Mackenzie. Wm. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1962. Pp. 433. $6.00.
This new translation is undoubtedly more fluent than that of the older Edinburgh se- ries and, all in all, the translator has made a creditable job. Yet a greater accuracy in the detail still is desirable, in order that the readers may be led, as it were, by the hand, into the intimate knowledge of what Calvin used to call his “procedure.” Here are a few examples : “The definition of his analogy,” analogiae definitio, is vague; definitio is a technical term, which could be rendered best by “resolution” (p. 127). “A distinction be- tween depraved lusts which secure our con- sent, and concupiscence which tempts and affects our hearts in such a way that it stops in the midst of urging us to sin” is verbose and weak; Calvin speaks of those evil de- sires which “go as far as consent,” quae ad consensum usque perveniunt, and of such con- cupiscence as “tickles and affects our hearts, yet stops in the midst of urging us,” quae sic corda titillat et afficit, ut in medio impulsu subsistat (p. 143). “Free will” is used either as a translation of the technical liberum arbi- trium — I really cannot think of a suitable English equivalent ; but then a footnote would be in order — or for rendering the adverb
sponte, as for instance on page 163, “there are good motions within us by which we are prepared of our own free will” ; in this last instance, the reader will not realize that these “preparations” are an important item in the vocabulary of the Roman Catholic theologians and polemists, which was officially adopted by the Council of Trent in its decree on Jus- tification. Here, again, why not a footnote? Pp. 416, 417: “and not after the tradition,” is the lesson of the King James version, cor- responding to Vulg. : iuxta traditionem, and to the Greek : Kara ryv irapabotriv. Calvin writes : iuxta institutionem, a word of which he is particularly fond, in the sense of “teach- ing,” “instruction,” the equivalent of the Greek SiSaxv. This leads me to a general remark: it might have been a good idea to translate the Biblical text as Calvin has it, rather than to give the King James instead, for the latter is misleading, and sometime causes the commentary to appear irrelevant or even unintelligible. The editors of the Corpus Reformatorum had been careful to use different types to show those passages which had been added to the 1539 text in subse- quent editions. But the general format of the new series excludes such typographical de- vices as well as footnotes, and this is most regrettable, since what is planned as a “popu- lar” edition would have become useful also for scholarly purposes, at a very small addi- tional cost.
Georges A. Barrois
Concordance to the Distinctive Greek Text of Codex Bezae, compiled by James D. Yoder. (=Vol. II of New Testament Tools and Studies, edited by Bruce M. Metzger.) E. J. Brill, Leiden, and Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1961. Pp. vi -f- 74 ■ $5.00.
The codex Bezae (known officially as D or 05), named after its former owner, the French Calvinist, Theodore Beza, is a Greek- Latin manuscript of the Four Gospels and Acts dating from the fifth (sixth) century and is of great importance for the study of the textual history of the New Testament. According to one rumor it spent the period of the World War II (1939-1945) at the bottom of a college well, but it is now again
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on view in the Cambridge (England) Uni- versity Library, which has been its home since 1581. It may be described as a “prob- lem-child” which demands an answer to these questions and many more besides. What is the relationship of its Greek and Latin sides? Neither is a direct translation of the other. Why does it make additions to and para- phrases of the text? Why does it indulge in fancy spellings and word formations? What is its relationship to the Syriac tradition? What connection has it with heresy and su- perstitious divination? (see the studies of Rendel Harris). What significance have the activities of the twenty odd correctors who, according to Scrivener, worked on the manu- script at various periods?
By reason of its vagaries D has produced a collection of language forms of its own not listed in the standard concordances of Moulton and Geden or of Bruder and so are in danger of being overlooked in study. Some of these are referred to in Arndt and Ging- rich’s Greek-English Lexicon, but it is use- ful to have this record of all of them which Professor Yoder has produced and has used as the basis of his unpublished Th.D. dis- sertation, “The Language of the Greek Vari- ants of Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis,” 1958.
The term “ ‘distinctive Greek text’ covers those words in Bezae that are not present in the corresponding text of Westcott and Hort’s edition of the Greek New Testament” (1881). The definite article is excluded and, follow- ing Moulton and Geden, the evidence for 54 and Kal is given in summary. Such a detailed volume has to be used over a period before it can be properly judged, but a spot-check at various points suggests a high degree of accuracy in the compilation and proof-read- ing.
A book like this is not without value to the Biblical student with Greek or to the pastor in quest of a text. Perhaps instead of re- churning the commentators he would find it useful to look at some of the words here and think of the story behind their appearance. For example, the drjSt'a which describes the relationship of Pilate and Herod (Lk 23:12) is not unknown in our midst today. The rare d\\o«5w of Lk 9:29 used of our Lord’s face at the Transfiguration has a link with the Greek text of Daniel. D’s form of Iscariot (dn-A Kapvurov) has given rise to several
theories as to the meaning of this name. k \4ppa at Mk 7 :2i we meet otherwise only at Rev. 9:21. The wape/cros of Mt 19:9 shows another of the many cases where a scribe has been influenced by the parallel passage in 5 132. In the rather unusual irenn-Taios of Ac 20:6 (after 5 days) the scribe manages to make one word do the work of three of the ordinary Greek text or the English. At Ac 22 :26 D makes a third reference to em- phasise the importance of Paul’s Roman citizenship. Unusual proper name forms are listed on the final page and perhaps a closer study of these might tell us more of where D was written.
All in all this book is no mere dry list, but, if treated imaginatively with a New Testament at hand, it could readily be a working introduction for anyone who wants to study Codex Bezae’s special phenomena. Why not begin now in a field where facts count for more than fancy?
Ian A. Moir
NEW COLLEGE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
HISTORY
On the Road to Christian Unity, by Samuel McCrea Cavert, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1961. Pp. 192. $3-75-
The Ecumenical Movement: What It Is and What It Does, by Norman Goodall, Oxford University Press, New York, 1961. Pp. 240. $4.50.
One Great Ground of Hope: Chris- tian Missions and Christian Unity, by Henry P. Van Dusen, The Westminster Press, Phila., 1961. Pp. 205. $3.95.
It may be simply a coincidence, but if so it is surely a happy one, that three books on the Ecumenical Movement should have appeared in 1961, the year in which that movement at the General Assembly of the World Council at New Delhi, achieved a signal degree of unification at the world level through the merger of the International Mis- sionary Council with the World Council of Churches.
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The three authors have for years been closely identified with the Movement. Dr. Cavert, after long service as Secretary of the Federal Council of Churches, and then of its successor, the National Council of Church- es, from 1954 to 1957 was Executive Secre- tary in the United States for the World Council of Churches. Dr. Goodall has been Secretary of the International Missionary 1 Council since 1944, and Secretary of the Joint Committee of the World Council of Churches and the International Missionary Council, since 1946. Dr. Van Dusen, though not a full-time official of the Movement, has attended every major ecumenical conference during the past crucial quarter century ; and since 1954 he has served as Chairman of the Joint Committee of the World Council of Churches and the International Missionary Council, in this capacity playing a key role in the recently-consummated merger of these two world Christian organizations. So all three authors write both out of inside knowl- 1 edge of the Movement and with a deep con- cern for its increasing usefulness in the cause of Jesus Christ throughout the world.
As was only to be expected, each author has his own individual approach and em- phasis. Dr. Van Dusen emphasizes the mis- sionary origins of the Movement, presents a careful analysis of the various forms which Christian reunion has taken and lays stress on the problems concerning the Movement as it faces the future. Dr. Cavert pays particu- lar attention to those Christian groups, Prot- estant, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catho- lic, which do not cooperate in the work of the Movement, and seeks to explain the rea- sons for this non-cooperation. Dr. Goodall, while of course not ignoring the questions with which these other authors deal, devotes much space to the history of the Movement and to its various organizational structures — i.e., to what it does as well as what it is. Despite such differences of viewpoint and emphasis, however, all three authors deal with the Ecumenical Movement in the same general way. They all give an outline of its history during the past half century, emphasiz- ing the World Missionary Council at Edin- burgh in 1910 as an important milestone, and pointing to the three-fold strand — the organization of the International Missionary Council, the Faith and Order Movement, and
the Life and Work Movement — which finally merged in the World Council of Churches as it exists today.
Secondly, they all deal in some detail with the question of the Movement’s goal — i.e., the kind of Christian unity which it seeks to bring into existence. On this matter there is no officially announced policy; but Dr. Van Dusen makes some valuable concrete sug- gestions concerning it.
Thirdly, all three authors concern them- selves with the major problems which con- front the Ecumenical Movement at present, and which seem likely to continue to plague it in the immediate future. There is, for ex- ample, the question of the relation of non- cooperating church groups to the main move- ment. Secondly, there is the question of the Movement’s leadership — what Dr. Van Dusen describes as “problems implicit in the trans- fer of leadership from the persons who so largely guided the destinies of the Movement in the days of its projection and early de- velopment, to those officially designated by the member churches for its direction” (p. 102). Again, there is the question of the role of councils of churches — local, national, in- ternational— within ecumenical Christianity. Once more, there is the question of the re- lation of world confessionalism, which has experienced such a resurgence in the past half century, to the interdenominational world Movement, represented by the World Coun- cil of Churches. And finally, but by no means least important, there is the grave and con- tinuing problem of establishing adequate grass roots for this world Movement of Christian unity at the local congregational level, where to many church members the word ecumeni- cal, with all that it implies, means little or nothing.
These three books are clearly and inter- estingly written, and therefore are eminently readable. Among them they present a well- rounded account of the origins, nature, pres- ent status and future prospects of that Move- ment of Christian unity which is one of the most striking developments in the recent his- tory of non-Roman Catholic Christianity.
Norman V. Hope
Freedom and Catholic Power in Spain and Portugal, by Paul Blanshard.
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Beacon Press, Boston, Mass., 1962. Pp. 300. $3.95.
This is an analysis by Paul Blanshard — the well-known author of American Freedom and Catholic Power — of the systems of gov- ernment prevailing in the Iberian Peninsular countries of Spain and Portugal. It is per- fectly true, as the author is careful to note, that these two governments differ some- what from each other. For example, in Por- tugal but not in Spain, there is a legal sepa- ration between Church and State, which means that in Portugal “the homeland con- gregations must raise most of the money for their own priests” (p. 221). The Roman Catholic Church, which claims a nominal membership of 90 per cent of the Portuguese people, enjoys special privileges; but minority religious groups, such as Jews and Protes- tants, have greater freedom under Salazar in Portugal than under Franco in Spain. In spite of such differences, however, both governments represent what Mr. Blanshard rightly calls “clerical fascism.” That is to say, in both Spain and Portugal a dictatorial government, in alliance with the Roman Catholic Church, has silenced and outlawed all political opposition by main force. It has imposed a strict censorship over all mass media of communication, such as the press, the radio, and even books. In the economic realm, a paternalistic capitalism has outlawed strikes, and denied the workers the right of free organization, even though it has also con- ferred on them some social benefits, such as health services, family allowances and old age pensions. In short, both Spain and Por- tugal have many of the earmarks of police states.
Mr. Blanshard does not fail to note that both Iberian dictatorships, though accepted resignedly by the citizenry, have run into trouble during recent years. For example, Portugal has had Goa forcibly annexed by the Indian government; and riots and other disturbances have broken out in Angola, one of Portugal’s chief African colonies. Spain has recently experienced a wave of strikes, some of which have enjoyed the backing even of certain members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. So it may be that time is running out for the two aging dictators of Spain and Portugal.
Mr. Blanshard is interested in exposing the facts about these Iberian governments, not merely as a reporter, but also as an Ameri- can. For, as he rightly points out, freedom, like peace, is indivisible ; and therefore, “in this troubled and interdependent world no suppression of human freedom is irrelevant to our own future” (p. 1). But more than that, American money, with the full approval of the American Roman Catholic press, has gone to shore up Franco’s dictatorship, in payment for the right to build air bases in Spain. Whatever value these bases may have from a military point of view, there is little doubt that this alliance of America with Fran- co has gravely blurred its image as a friend of democracy, and a foe of dictatorship. And it may well be that, because of present Ameri- can support for Franco, the Spanish govern- ment which succeeds him will not be as friend- ly to the western democracies as the United States would like.
Some reviewers have disagreed with Mr. Blanshard’s suggestion that the United States should end its ties with Franco at the ear- liest possible moment. Others have claimed that he has not done adequate justice to cer- tain improvements in Spain, such as higher living standards and some relaxation of po- lice rule. But it can be confidently asserted that he has presented such a well documented and objective account of the two dictatorships that his book will be banned by their censors. This is an additional reason why it should be widely read in the United States of America.
Norman V. Hope
The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 1919-1941, by Donald B. Mey- er. University of California Press, Ber- keley and Los Angeles, i960. Pp. 482. $6.75.
The Protestant quest for social justice in the United States has been perennial. At- tempts to understand this quest in the twen- tieth century are comparatively new and fresh. Recently, Paul Carter in The Decline and Revival of the Social Gospel, 1920-1940, and Robert M. Miller in American Protes- tantism and Social Issues, 1919-1939, have attempted to write histories of the period
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dated by the passing of Walter Rauschen- busch and the rise to influence of Reinhold Niebuhr. Both of these social historians were interested in the organized aspects of the quest and stressed analysis of the denomi- national and ecumenical pronouncements of Protestant groups.
Donald B. Meyer, Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, supplements, indeed, makes up for certain deficiencies, in the work of Carter and Miller. Meyer attempts an analysis in depth. His study is polarized around Walter Rauschenbusch and Reinhold Niebuhr. All other individuals and organizations are drawn, and sometimes quartered, in relation to these figures.
The so-called “social gospel” movement was the climax of the Protestant “religion of will,” according to Meyer. While it was colored by the liberal theological ferment of the post-civil war period it was essen- tially the last effort of evangelical Protestant- ism to embrace within its concern society as a whole. In criticizing Rauschenbusch, Mey- er maintains that he “failed to defend a cen- ter of religious meaning prior to, in some sense independent of, social salvation, from invasion by society and the political.” He failed largely because he did not define per- sonal salvation in such a way as to include the proper relation between man and other men. Rauschenbusch believed that the “flow of force” would all be in one direction, “from the centers of prior salvation outward.” Con- sequently, in claiming that the Christianizing of the social order was as possible as the Christianizing of the individual, he tended to equate the Christianization of the social order, the coming of the Kingdom of God, with the Christianizing of the soul. But he still left the individual, “with his inner unity and composure, his sense of meaning and integrity,” exposed to the power structures and struggles of society. After dealing with the tendency to the absolutize reason and love in Harry Ward and Kirby Page, Meyer concludes his summary of the social gospel. It must be criticized, not because of its social vision or its political naivete, but because of its view of “the sanctified man, the good man, the moral man who would moralize immoral society.”
Then came Reinhold Niebuhr, fresh from
his exposure to the Ford revolution in De- troit, to expose Americans to neo-orthodoxy. Niebuhr saw man’s problem as older than that of industrialization. The problem is as old as man himself ; man is a sinner. The Renaissance was right in asserting man’s transcendence and freedom, but wrong in as- serting confidently and optimistically the way in which man manifests these attributes. The Reformation was right in insisting upon humility as the check upon pretension, re- pentance as the center of humility, to recog- nize the evil within oneself before the evil outside. The fruit of humility is the capacity to forgive ; its support is a true knowledge of God possessed by grace, not by right. And grace cannot be accumulated in history. In relating all this to his discussion of social problems Niebuhr maintained that justice did not have to wait upon the prior salvation of all men or righteousness within man. While love may be the impossible possibility, it can be approximated only between individuals. Love gives the direction to justice, however, which remains the potential possibility in any given situation arising among men. In the service of justice, power, whether rep- resented by capital, labor, or the church, has to be balanced by power. Thus man will be saved from the depersonalization of an “au- tomatic process” compounded by an “auto- cratic management” often supported by “ab- stractions of society.” Meyer suggests Nie- buhr’s crisis came before and during the Second World War when he waited for re- pentance. Lost to perfection, open to prag- matic dealings, he had little concrete and familiar to offer to his fellow Americans to fight for or to work toward after the war. According to Meyer, the neo-liberals in- fluenced by neo-orthodoxy — Walter Horton, Henry Pitt Van Dusen, Robert Calhoun, John Bennett — tried to moderate between Niebuhr and his fellow Americans. Paul Til- lich added a cultural dimension to relieve the preoccupation with the political.
Meyer observes quite perceptively — but all too briefly — that neither Rauschenbusch nor Niebuhr, until recently, developed any help- ful ecclesiology. However, the Church is not the brotherhood transcending and softening all human divisions, as among chastened lib- erals. The Church is sacramental, according to Niebuhr, pointing to a center and ground
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of meaning that is not in itself, in which it shares but which it does not possess. Founded on need and shaped in repentance, it is the human society which understands that no society can realize brotherhood, even the church. “Every society,” according to Mey- er’s interpretation, “lives under, not toward, the kingdom of God.” It is in the Church that a man may wait upon God. Meyer cred- its Niebuhr with reviving a new self-con- sciousness within Protestantism and with its increasing willingness to carry “great respon- sibilities without great expectations.”
This is the book about the “social passion” to buy and to read. To be sure, it directs the student to a more careful consideration of the books by Miller and Carter which have to do with the Church. But it raises its questions in a far more suggestive manner than do other writers. Meyer’s style is some- what involved; but it is helpfully allusive. Meyer’s conceptions are not always clear, such as, his analysis of the who’s who and what’s what of neo-orthodoxy, the Christian’s relation to the Church and the kingdom of God, and the way by which Niebuhr protects the individual who seeks after justice in con- stant struggle any better than did early “so- cial gospellers.” Meyer’s analysis never fails to stimulate. He is very much concerned with the upsurge of what he calls “economic fun- damentalism,” e.g., Christian Economics, which equates Christianity with laissez-faire. And well he might be ! But he might have expressed more interest in those men who represent a Niebuhrian harvest, who have accepted his political insights and who are now in power in Washington, e.g., Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., for whom this book was written as a doctoral dissertation. How do these men understand “grace” which is “be- yond security, beyond morality, beyond trag- edy,” and which is basis for the patient bear- ing of sustained political responsibility? Where and how do these men wait upon God?
James H. Smylie
The Christians of Korea, by Samuel H. Moffett. Friendship Press, New York, 1962. Pp. 174. $2.95.
From the very beginning the establish- ment and growth of the Christian church in
Korea has been one of the wonders of the modern missionary movement. The seventy- fifth anniversary of the founding of the church in Korea has recently passed, and there are more Christians in that little country than there were in the world at the end of the first century of the Christian era!
Of late years divisions within the church have been a cause of great sorrow, but one finishes the present small volume with a sense of gratitude to God for the accomplishments of the Gospel in Korea, which are nothing short of being marvelous. We feel that even more might have been made, in this review, of the conversion of thousands of prisoners behind barbed wire, who accepted Christ even though they had been indoctrinated with all that Communism had to give.
This book is written in a most attractive style and is filled with statistics which rep- resent up-to-date research by an expert. Samuel Moffett was born in Korea and his father was one of the great founders of mis- sion work in that “Hermit Kingdom.” Many people know the author from his former book, Where’re the Sun, which has been one of the most popular volumes published by Friend- ship Press. The book under review has a number of excellent illustrations and a book bibliography. It is one of the textbooks to be used by the churches in the general mission study for this year on East Asia.
The author is remarkable in his selection of the salient facts of the Christian movement and combines them with information about the country and the results of the tragic war years, to give us a vivid picture with high lights and deep shadows. This is certainly a splendid book for group study and should be read carefully by every pastor and mis- sion leader.
J. Christy Wilson
PRACTICAL
The Search for Meaning, by A. J. Ungersma. Westminster Press, Phila., 1961. Pp. 188. $4.75.
The Professor of Pastoral Theology of San Francisco Theological Seminary has given us a sympathetic and informing summary of the existential analysis and logotherapy of Dr. Victor E. Frankl of Vienna. Not only
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is Ungersma well-trained for the task, but he went to Vienna to gain an insight into the theory and practice of one of the most interesting and controversial psychiatrists of our time. The result of Ungersma’s study is warmly favorable ; it is also a welcome intro- duction to logotherapy based upon Frankl’s position that the main drive in human life is the “will to meaning.”
Frankl does not repudiate the Freudian method, but he does believe that the “will to pleasure” is secondary to the “will to meaning.” Frankl bases his theory upon sci- entific study, clinical practice and his own bitter experience in a concentration camp. Over against the naturalistic interpretation of much psychotherapy, Ungersma describes Frankl’s concern for the growth of meaning in life as well as the person’s realization of values and the will to act responsibly. Un- gersma seeks to relate all this to Reinhold Niebuhr’s, Nature and Destiny of Man, and Pitrim Sorokin’s studies in sensate culture.
This book is significant for the Christian since it uses the term “logos” to describe the existential core of human life. It seeks to bridge the chasm between religion and psychiatry. It claims that the deepest need of man is for a meaning which will create initiative and responsible action.
Logotherapy may also be welcomed by some psychoanalysts because it goes beyond the pragmatic approach to human problems. It seems to fill a human need. The removal of problems is one thing; the engendering of some will to meaning to fill the vacuum is an- other.
On the other hand, there are psycho- analysts who will regard logotherapy as unscientific, and as the introduction into analy- sis of a theological factor which is quite ex- traneous, and even dangerous. And there are theologians who will regard Frankl as the champion of a rather hazy theology which is lacking in a definitive of the meaning of Frankl’s “meaning” !
However, it must be admitted that Frankl is having success in his therapy. And above all, he is causing some serious thought among psychiatrists and religionists as to the “chief end of man” and hence the crucial task of those who deal with man.
E. G. Homrighausen
Doctor Songster, by Paul Sangster. Epworth Press, London, 1962. Pp. 372. 25s.
Biographies of great preachers are rare these days and none of us can determine whether this is due to a scarcity of great pulpit men or of skilful biographers. In an age when secretarial help, press releases, and carefully noted itineraries are the com- mon blessing and advantage of outstanding churchmen, it is unfortunate that so few stirring biographies are written and that we lack great contemporary portraits such as those once given to us by Adamson, Barbour, Porritt, and Allen.
Before Will Sangster died he entrusted his son, Paul, with the responsibility of telling his story for posterity. He left chapter head- ings and copious notes, but the major job still remained and what we get is happily not a sentimental paean of filial devotion, but a sober and objective assessment that does honor to one of the greatest figures in Brit- ish Methodism in this generation.
When the story of Methodism in Britain from 1930 to i960 is written down, three figures will stand out for reasons peculiarly each own : Leslie D. Weatherhead, William E. Sangster, and Donald Soper. Sangster’s career was cut off prematurely — he was only sixty when he died — but into those years was crammed a career of growth, development, and service to his denomination that make him easily primus inter pares. Coming out of a family of splendid spiritual devotion with an early acquaintance with the Christian faith in the Radnor Mission, blessed with a keen mind and an abundance of natural gifts as a preacher, executive, and prophetic leader, the record of his life as set down by his son is an inspiration to younger men, a joyful memory to his family, and a contribution without equal to the life of Protestantism in post-war Britain. He was a rare combina- tion of discipline and devotion which made him an attractive preacher for consistent con- gregations of 3,000 in Westminster Hall, London, and a churchman who served in many responsible capacities, including President of the Methodist Conference, 1951.
Yet he continued to be also an author, writing fifteen books in all, and publishing
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a stream of pamphlets and tracts along with a regular column in The Methodist Recorder. He never let his scholarship lapse. In spite of the constant harassments of the executive responsibilities he carried, he never lost sight of the glory of preaching and of the indis- pensability of the preacher. His social con- sciousness was sharpened and deepened dur- ing the five long years he ministered to the victims of the air raids in the basements and tubes of London and some of the little vi- gnettes and snapshots recorded by his son are pictures of greatness. Indeed after the mess of World War II he was one of the few prophetic voices in Britain who tried through a vast “machinery” of prayer cells to give spiritual fibre to the nation and to fashion among the irregular pieces some blueprint for the future.
This is a lively portrait, for Will Sangster would neither fit nor desire any other. For those who have read his books and heard him preach at his best, it is a memento of worthy dimensions. If any weakness appears it is in the lack of a more definitive review of the age — a fateful era — during which Britain ex- perienced a great industrial depression, a terrible war, the rise of Labor to political power, and a whole plethora of social and economic revolutions, but as a tribute to a man of great and varied capacities it is ade- quate.
Donald Macleod
From Out of the West : Messages from Western Pulpits, ed. by Paul Jesse Baird. The Lantern Press, Stockton, California, 1962. Pp. 156. $3.95.
This book is a response to a felt need. “For many years it has been felt that the men who fill America’s pulpits in the West were not adequately known by the rest of the Chris- tian Church,” so states the promotional de- scription of this book. The result has been the establishment of The Lantern Press to be “a channel for publishing the message of the Church of the West.” This initial volume consists of a collection of sixteen sermons by leading Presbyterian ministers in the general geographic area of the Pacific Coast. They are a representative group, mostly from large
churches, with a very fair distribution among seminary backgrounds (Princeton, 6; San Francisco, 4; McCormick, 3; Omaha, 1; Union, N.Y., 1; Union, Richmond, 1). An interesting feature is the inclusion of a photo- graph of each preacher’s church, accom- panied by data about its size and develop- ment, and a modest biography of the preacher himself. The contributors range from such widely known names as Jesse Hays Baird and Theodore A. Gill to others who although not generally familiar yet show quality and real capacity in sermonic art.
This is an ambitious project and we hope that the idealism and optimism of the found- ers will not succumb to a box office chill. The market for volumes of discrete sermons is not brisk, but if either the members of the churches whose ministers are represented here purchase copies or if the enterprise is endowed, then the continued usefulness of such publications will be sustained and as- sured. Those of us who deal with sermons in the classroom welcome it as another worthwhile source of commendable material.
It is difficult to appraise a volume, written by sixteen different men who have no ob- vious subject pattern or theme structure in mind. All one can do is to single out a few trends. The encouraging feature is that the sermons are generally Biblical although a few are so in no more than a sense of accom- modation. However, the return to Biblical studies is just now getting to the pulpit and therefore this criticism may be more unfair than it is a good omen. Probably the best and most hopeful characteristic of these ser- mons is that the Western pulpit is critical of itself and here appears its growing edge. These are, all in all, good average sermons — interesting, personal, and filled with hu- man concern — but are more apt to tell us more about what these preachers are doing than what they are thinking. Are they read- ing theology? With some exceptions their frames of reference are more frequently nat- ural life rather than the supernatural. Re- garding form, their homiletical thinking needs to be more cogent and embodied in a more unified thrust. Harry Emerson Fosdick — as yet without peer in the area of sermon con- struction— was able to state the essence of his sermon in one sentence. None of these
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critical observations, however, are intended to deter the Western group from going on to equally useful projects in the general area of the preaching and pastoral ministry.
Donald Macleod
The Christian Answer (to Life’s Urgent Questions), by George E. Swea- zey. Bethany Press, St. Louis, Mo., 1962. Pp. 192. $3.50.
An earlier volume, Effective Evangelism (Harper’s, 1953), established George Swea- zey’s reputation as a writer and thinker of substantial quality at a time when an arm of the Church’s program of witness was fall- ing victim to the operations of the hucksters.
1 Today, on the threshold of the space age, the same author comes to us as preacher with fifteen sermonic essays of unusual perception and relevance. The immediate context which prompted these pages is not indicated, but good readers will gather that here we have an able and sensitive minister of the Gospel giving well thought out answers to the awk- ward and embarrassing questions posed by a secular age to the Christian believer. And the messages come with attractiveness and force because the literary style is marked with fresh imagery, contemporary allusions, personal situations ; and because facts are used instead of generalities, we see constantly the evidences of a well-informed and courageous mind.
The contents are gathered under a series of questions that are like the expansion of the main divisions of a creed: How do you get hold of religion? Where am I? Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? Where does the Church fit in? How is the Bible the Word of God? Each of these questions is examined astutely by Dr. Sweazey who has an uncanny art of turning them over and around in order to see the pros and cons of every facet. His dis- cussions sparkle with axioms (“The pure in heart shall see God; the impure in heart do not want to see him,” p. 30) ; his definitions are revealing (“Sin is like an offense against someone who deserves something better of us,” p. 50) ; indeed some of his marginal re- marks reveal the depth of his insights and comprehension, e.g., his concise treatment of
the Roman Catholic Church (pp. 131, 132), or his reflections upon theories of the Atone- ment (p. 94). In short, here is page after page of high and thorough thinking upon the great tenets of our common faith.
Some may find Dr. Sweazey to be lacking in an over-all smoothness that comes from well-bridged transitions in literary form, but more will be abundantly satisfied to have in- vested in a book of addresses teeming with ideas that have matured through careful processes of the mind.
Donald Macleod
Proclaiming Christ Today, by W. Norman Pittenger. Seabury Press, Greenwich, Conn., 1962. Pp. 148. $3.50.
Here is a book on preaching, written by an Anglican as a series of lectures for An- glicans and from an Anglican point of view, yet sufficiently broad in its message to have a measure of timeliness for the Reformed traditions. Professor Pittenger, a member of the faculty of General Theological Seminary, New York, has an established reputation as a writer and scholar in his own field, Chris- tian apologetics, and for this reason his thoughts on preaching will be read with more than passing interest. He writes in a clear, sober style, and his content indicates wide reading, not only in his own ecclesiastical tradition but also among sources Catholic and ecumenical.
In the course of six solid chapters, the author covers the nature of the Gospel we preach, the context of its proclamation, its hearers and the obstacles to contemporary communication, and the need for an authentic spiritual accent in our encounter with the pat- terns of secular thought. For an Anglican his appreciation of the office of preaching is high, for he sees its indispensability for the act of worship as much as the necessity of the latter as a context for the former. He has something to say of real consequence regard- ing issues that confuse and scare, many preachers today : the cult of scientism, the communication of neo-orthodoxy, Bultmann’s demythologizing, miracles, the finality of the Christian faith, and the right focus of evan- gelistic preaching.
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This is not a profound book, but it can be read with profit a second time. Professors of preaching should list it as required reading. Parish ministers will find in it a fresh orien- tation of their primary task — the ministry of preaching.
Donald Macleod
GENERAL
Through the Valley of the Kwai, by Ernest Gordon. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1962. Pp. 257. $3.95.
One valid test for a good book is to ask whether or not it sharpens the vision and enlarges the sympathies of the reader. By this standard, Ernest Gordon’s narrative of his prison experiences along the River Kwai during World War II is an unusually good book. It whets one’s sensitivities to the prob- lems and meaning of life as no book that I have read recently.
In good epic fashion, it begins in medias res, with Gordon lying in the morgue end of the Death House of the Japanese prison camp at Chungkai, Thailand. Like many a soldier in the C.B.I. Theater, he had had his share of diseases — malaria, beriberi, diph- theria, amoebic dysentery. Now he had diph- theria. A long flashback brings us up to date. Gordon was a company commander in the 93rd Highlanders, one of the battalions that were decimated in the bloody haul through Malaya and over the causeway to Singapore. From Singapore he had made his way to Padang in Sumatra, where he and nine other men began an escape odyssey on a fifty-foot prahu named the Setia Berganti. The ill- starred flight had ended several hundred miles out in the Indian Ocean, where the Setia Berganti was stopped by a Japanese warship. The men had then been sent to a succession of prison compounds, Gordon ar- riving finally at Chungkai, near which were being built, mostly by the labor of coolies and P.O.W.’s, the jungle railroad and famous bridge over the River Kwai.
The atrocities of the concentration camp are brought freshly to mind. None of these, however, is made to seem so terrible as the moral and spiritual degradation of men un- der the pressures of servitude, deprivation and
disease. All hope seems to have gone out of life. Stealing and cheating became the norms of behavior toward one’s own fellow sol- diers. Whole sentences were composed in which every word was a curse word.
But then, when the long night was at its darkest, the prisoners at Chungkai began to witness what Gordon calls “the miracle by the River Kwai.” Compassion began to return. Men who were still able to get about and to work began to take an interest in the sick and the dying. Gordon was carried to a little bamboo shack of his own, where he was daily visited by a young man who bathed him, cleaned his sores and massaged his paralyzed legs. Before long, he was walking again — and ministering to others. The steal- ing and the cheating stopped. Circulating li- braries were started, and a jungle university was initiated — with no records, no adminis- tration and no salaried professors. The men began to talk about God, and about the mean- ing of redemption. Eventually a little chapel was built — a church without walls, but with a crudely fashioned altar, a bamboo cross, and a vessel made from a tin can with a shoe lace for a wick.
Gordon’s book is essentially about this mir- acle. It is about the recovery of heroism and self-respect and laughter. It is about the rediscovery of God. The title phrase, Through the Valley of the Kwai, is not, as I suspected before reading the book, a play for popular identification with Pierre Boulle’s already famous Bridge over the River Kwai. In- stead, it is a fitting allusion to the Twenty- third Psalm’s “through the valley of the shadow of death.” Many of the P.O.W.’s in the Japanese death-camps sank even beyond the desire to live. The miracle was that they were brought back — first to the desire and then to life.
Though he tries, as humbly as a Scotsman knows how, to stay in the background through most of the narrative, it is evident that the miracle had a great effect upon Gordon him- self. When the war was over, he, along with hundreds of other Jocks and G.I.’s, entered theological school to study for the ministry. He is now Dean of the Chapel at Princeton University, where he says that he witnesses the miracle he first saw in the jungle “being repeated daily on the campus — the miracle of
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God at work in His world.” The final chap- ter, in which Gordon traces the postwar his- tories of some of the P.O.W.’s and comments upon postwar conditions generally, is, in my opinion, one of the best.
There are a number of minor scenes in the book that are played out unduly. If they were condensed and the prose were tighter, the action would be more gripping. The reader is almost always conscious that the author is not a professional writer. (This is bad, but it is also good — one comes to detest “slick- ness” in a book of this sort.) There are numerous inept phrasings, such as this sen- tence: “We were slipping rapidly down the scale of degradation.” But there is also some good and subtle prose, as in this example : “Flies clustered on his nose and mouth. Then I knew that he was dead.”
There is naturally some question about the accuracy of the reporting of certain events and conversations after nearly two decades — especially since Gordon has testified that his diary was confiscated by the Japanese. Is this really what happened and what was said, or is it what twenty years have done to what happened and what was said? Still, some latitude must be permitted, as it is to any chronicler. (One cannot help wondering whether the misquotation of Tennyson on p. 22 was “Limey’s” or the author’s.)
But I have said that this is a good book because it engages the sensitivities and widens the sympathies, and it is. No reader can fail to be impressed by the indomitable spirit of these thousands of prisoners of war, who, having made their descensus ad inferos, came back to sanity and health and love, or by the graciousness of the God whom they praised for their return. Archibald MacLeish may have been right when he said that “A poem should not mean, but be.” This reviewer, however, is always happy to come across a book that means. Ernest Gordon’s book does.
John Killinger
Hear the Word; A Novel about Eli- jah and Elisha, by Heinrich Zador. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1962. Pp. 286. $4.95.
For several years now we have been com-
plaining mightily about the two-dimensional- ism of contemporary literature. Where, we have asked again and again, may the nu- minous any longer be found?
Here is a book to answer that complaint. G. Ernest Wright himself never wrote more dynamically about the Word of the Lord than has Heinrich Zador, the Budapest-born music critic, author and Zionist who emi- grated to Palestine in 1939. Here, in an imaginative account of the prophetic minis- tries of Elijah and Elisha, is a real attempt to deal sensitively with the concept of “word” as “event” — because God speaks, things hap- pen. The German title, Die Erfiillung, ex- presses it more graphically than the Eng- lish.
Nor does the novel fail, because it is so concerned with the divine, to be human. In fact, it illustrates again the insight of the first words of Calvin’s Institutes, that man is known most truly when viewed in relation to God. The portrait of Elisha as a penitent because the Word has used him despite his unworthiness — the climactic moment of the novel — is especially compelling. The “infi- nite qualitative distance” was never expressed in better terms.
It must be admitted that there is an ap- parent unevenness in Zador’s performance. Some readers will doubtless feel that in try- ing to rest his plot on both Elijah and Eli- sha he has fallen between the stools. The Elisha section is more fully and imagina- tively developed than the Elijah part. Con- sequently the last half or three-quarters of the novel is much more absorbing than the first.
Few writers would have the courage to split a novel between two major characters. But Zador is driving at something by doing it. It is not Elijah and Elisha who get top billing, but God! The Word, the dabar Jah- weh, abides behind every scene as the ultimate reality. Therefore what matter if the story be divided among the lesser dramatis per- sonae, who are but shadows in comparison?
Perhaps this points up the real problem of any biblical-type narrative in our day. It must bridge an almost unspannable gulf from the biblical Zeitgeist to the modern. The same was true of Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers, the reviewers of which,
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as Amos Wilder has observed, were hard put to appear oriented, because the Old Testa- ment material is so basically counter to the cut of the contemporary mind. Few people are genuinely sympathetic to the idiom of biblical thought — including the idea of “word” as “event.”
These few, however, will appreciate Za- dor’s novel, and the world of wonder it un- folds. The rest — well, Kierkegaard had the word for them when he said that there ought to be asylums for people who are always sane and logical.
John Killinger